eminem
music
birth age
Birth nameMarshall Bruce Mathers III
Also known asM&M (former)
Born(1972-10-17) October 17, 1972 (age 41
childhood
albums
'The Slim Shady LP' (1999)
© Aftermath/Interscope Records
A white MC from Detroit? Unflinching paeans to drugs and violence? The task before Eminem seemed illogical at first, but he turned trials into trophies within one year of arriving on the mainstream scene. Complaints about his "evil" music failed to stifle the album's success, as The Slim Shady LP went on to sell over 5 million copies. We have this manic slice of dysfunction to thank for most of Eminem's best songs.
Top Tracks: "Role Model," "Guilty Conscience"
'Marshal Mathers LP' (2000)
© Aftermath/Interscope Records
A year after he made a big splash in the industry, Eminem returned with yet another masterpiece in The Marshall Mathers LP. Em's sophomore effort helped cement his status as one of the most exciting artists of the new millennium.
Top Tracks: "The Way I Am," "Stan"
'The Eminem Show' (2002)
By the time The Eminem Show arrived, Em was now splitting time between the recording booth and the boards. Despite this newfound penchant for beatmaking, this album showed very little dropoff in the lyrics department. Em continued his tradition of throwing darts at detractors, this time taking on Canibus on "Square Dance" and Jermaine Dupri on "Say What You Say."
Top Tracks: "White America," "Till I Collapse"
'Encore' (2004)
© Aftermath/Interscope Records
While Encore generated applause for its political candidness on one hand, Eminem drew criticism for imbuing that album with his increasingly cartoonish lyrics on the other. Even though it spawned gems like the plodding political punch, "Mosh," and the introspective "Yellow Brick Road," it was still considered a disappointment by Eminem's standards.
Top Tracks: "Mosh," "Yellow Brick Road"
'Eminem Presents The Re-Up' (2006)
This is the one most Eminem fans would love to forget. On The Re-Up, Eminem surrounded himself with the budding talent on his Shady Records roster. But the artists are soon relegated to watchdogs, and then, proxies -- trying to do what Eminem cannot: appear in control. Eminem experiments with emo-rap for most of the album, screaming and scrambling lyrics with unfounded verve and precise lunacy.
Eminem - 'Relapse' (2009)
© Aftermath/Interscope Records
Eminem finally lifted his 5-year moratorium on solo albums with the release of Relapse. Eminem's narratives are too familiar, but his method of delivering them has evolved. There are fake accents, unique rhyme sequences and vocal cadences here ("Soon as the flow starts, I compose art like the ghost of Mozart").
Top Tracks: "Deja Vu," "Medicine Ball"
Eminem - 'Recovery' (2010)
© Aftermath/Interscope Records
Recovery is unlike any of Eminem's previous studio albums. Lacking the skits, traditional guests, and goofball lead singles that characterized The Slim Shady LP through Relapse, Recovery is Eminem coming to terms with his own legacy, shedding the tired formulas that marked his previous albums and attempting to reassert his place in the pantheon of the hip-hop elite.
INFO
To call Eminem hip-hop's Elvis is correct to a degree, but it's largely inaccurate. Certainly, Eminem was the first white rapper since the Beastie Boys to garner both sales and critical respect, but his impact exceeded this confining distinction. On sheer verbal skills, Eminem was one of the greatest MCs of his generation -- rapid, fluid, dexterous, and unpredictable, as capable of pulling off long-form narrative as he was delivering a withering aside -- and thanks to his mentor Dr. Dre, he had music to match: thick, muscular loops that evoked the terror and paranoia Em's music conjured. And, to be certain, a great deal of the controversy Eminem courted -- and during the turn of the millennium, there was no greater pop cultural bogeyman than Marshall Mathers -- came through in how his violent fantasias, often directed at his mother or his wife, intertwined with flights of absurdity that appealed to listeners too young to absorb the psychodramas Eminem explored on his hit albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP. With hits My Name Is and The Real Slim Shady, he ruled the airwaves, but it wasn't long before some detractors acknowledged his depth, helped in part by singles like the mournful Stan, written from the perspective of an obsessed fan. Eminem capitalized on this forward momentum by crossing over onto the big screen with "8 Mile", earning acclaim for his performance and an Oscar for the film's anthem Lose Yourself, but a number of demons led him to shut down for the second half of the decade, an absence that proved life is indeed empty without Em, before he returned in 2009 with Relapse.
Born Marshall Mathers in the Kansas City suburb St. Joseph, Eminem spent his childhood between Missouri and Michigan, settling in Detroit by his teens. At the age of 14, he began rapping with a high-school friend, the two adopting the names "Manix" and "M&M," which soon morphed into Eminem. Under this name, Mathers entered battle rapping, a struggle dramatized in the fictionalized "8 Mile". Initially, the predominantly African-American audience didn't embrace Eminem, but soon his skills gained him a reputation, and he was recruited to join several rap groups https://play.google.com/store/music/artist/Eminem?id=As2n6c7fmjt6fyysxuwgjgynzp4&hl=en