#shadyxv

I was listening to my Eminem playlist when I came across a song from this album, but my brainrotted ass read it differently. So, I made a shitpost based off of this and for a friend who's obsessed with Em and Murder Drones (V is his favorite character). Chat did I cook

Throughout this article I am going to link to every song I can think of that tells the more personal parts of Eminem’s story. Feel free to read about his rise to fame, or take a moment to listen to it.

Em was born October 17th 1972 and grew up as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, his bastard father gave him his name and then took off when Em was still very young. He was left to be raised by his mother Debbie, a single mother struggling with a drug addiction. The household was toxic and unstable. They moved around a million times before somewhat settling in Detroit. (Contrary to popular belief Em was not born in Michigan, he has Missouri southern roots.)

 It was in Detroit where he found his love for music and rap, it is also where he met his first love Kim. Kim and Em were teenagers when they first met, Kim had run away from home when Debbie invited her in. The relationship started from there, and was rocky ever since. They had their one and only child together in 1995. I’m sure we have all heard the name Hailie Jade by now, even if you aren’t an Eminem Stan. He struggled to raise a daughter while pursuing his dreams at the same time. He had to flip burgers by day, and do underground shows by night. He managed to release his first album 1996, it was titled Infinite. The album didn’t sell, well technically it sold 1,000 copies, with critics saying it sounded too much like Nas or the delivery was too soft. 1996 was a difficult period for Em, his album flopped, he was fired from the burger joint he was working at right before Christmas, and he had to move back in his mother’s trailer home, bringing his daughter and Kim with him. With the pressure building Eminem hit one of his lowest points, he downed a bottle of Tylenol and attempted suicide. 

It’s crazy the difference a year could make. In 1997 Em competed in the Rap Olympics, a rap competition the gains quite a bit of attention. He ended up coming in second place to the rapper Otherwize (who, never heard of him?). Otherwize won in a slimy way. During Em’s turn in the battle the man walk off stage and left Em to verse no one. After the whole ordeal he was crushed. A man came up to Em right before he was about to leave and asked for a demo, Em chucked it at him, still fuming from the loss. What are the odds that chance encounter would result in Em’s music being passed along to Dr.Dre?

 We all know the rest right? Hi, My Name Is  floods the airwaves and the public consciousness, the Slim Shady persona is born, The Slim Shady LP sells millions, Kim and Em get married and then divorced, The Marshall Mathers LP comes out, sell millions, forms a rap group with a few of his closest friends called D12, is critically acclaimed but politically demonized, Em stars in 8 mile, it wins a fucking Oscar, the best album ever made comes out and it’s called the Eminem Show, goes on tour after tour after tour, gets Encore comes out and it eh, Eminem gets married to Kim once again, they push out a greatest hits album, and it all comes to a screeching halt.

2006 was the next lowest point in Em’s life. On April 5th, three months after he got remarried to Kim, he was filing for divorce. 6 days later on April 11th, Eminem’s best friend of many years, a member of the aforementioned group D12, someone he was inspired by and looked up to, someone he loved like a brother, was shot and killed. 

This sent Em into a depression that lasted for years. He retreated from the music scene entirely, spiraled further into drug addiction, something he has been dealing with for a while at this point, and disappeared from the public eye. During this time his health was deteriorating, he put on bit of weight, started to struggle with insomnia, and grew dependent on prescription drugs. The few glimpse the media could get of Em during this time were still exploited.

In late 2007 Eminem overdosed on the equivalent of 4 bags of heroin. The doctors told him if he would have gotten to the emergency room two hours later he would have died. He decided it was time to get into a recovery program. After trial and error Em got clean in 4/20/2008, and began dipping his toes back into music. His first album back was titled Relapse and it received a lukewarm reception. It was a very playful and experimental album, a sound his fans with used to, but he came back swinging with Recovery. 

Again, I think we know this part. Put out Recovery and it returned him to the world stage, had record breaking hits like Love The Way You Lie and Not Afraid, released the sequel to the Marshall Mathers LP, released a collaborative album titled ShadyXV to promote Shady Records, toured (rarely because it was a trigger for him), dropped Revival which received mixed reactions, released Kamikaze with no warning as a huge fuck you to the critics of Revival, and finally released Music to Be Murdered By just this year. And that brings us up to date.

There are a million little details that I am missing, but to be fair his career has lasted longer than I have been alive. I think that plays into why I’m so obse-ssed with him, he as music for anything I could be going through or feeling. He is and will always be my goto. When I’m fed up with my own life I can fall completely into his world instead.

I was a...

Afraid to make a single sound

Afraid I would never find a way out, out, out

Afraid I'd never be found