Rapper. Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III, on October 17, 1972, in Kansas City, Missouri. Eminem spent a good deal of his childhood moving back and forth between Kansas City and the Detroit metropolitan area; when he was 12, he and his mother moved permanently to Warren, Michigan. A fan of rap music from a young age, Eminem began performing at age 14. Although he dropped out of high school and worked at odd jobs for a number of years, his focus remained on his music.
Eminem first recorded as half of the Detroit rap duo Soul Intent, and made his solo debut in 1996 with the independent release Infinite. The album was soon followed by The Slim Shady EP—both releases made quite a splash in the hip-hop underground, and soon Eminem was being praised both for his exaggerated, nasal-voiced rapping style and the bluntly controversial nature of his lyrics. Not in the least, he gained notice because of his skin color, and was soon hailed as rap music’s next “great white hope.”

After performing in a freestyle rap competition on a Los Angeles radio station, Eminem came to the attention of Dr. Dre, a powerful player on the rap music scene. Dr. Dre signed Eminem to his Aftermath label and began working with the young rapper on a full-length CD that would include many of the tracks from the previously released Slim Shady EP. Eminem’s debut with Aftermath, The Slim Shady LP, was released on February 23, 1999. Driven by the success of the hit single “My Name Is,” the album shot to No. 2 on the Billboard chart within a few weeks. It eventually went triple platinum, and earned Eminem two Grammy Awards, for Best Best Rap Solo Performance ("My Name Is") and Best Rap Album.

Eminem had similar critical and commercial success with his second major release, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), which sold close to two million copies in its first week of release and became the fastest-selling rap album of all time. Critics almost universally praised the album as smart, ironic, and edgy, but as an inevitable result of such wide exposure (especially among young rap fans), the album generated a good deal of controversy for its content, which included graphic violence, explicit sexual references, and antihomosexual slurs. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) organized a protest of the Music Television (MTV) network’s support of Eminem during the MTV Video Music Awards, held in September 2000. Eminem, performing at the head of a swarm of bleached-blonde, look-alike Slim Shadies, took home MTV awards for both Video Of The Year and Best Male Video categories for his smash hit single, "The Real Slim Shady". The top-selling solo artist of that year, Eminem won Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance ("The Real Slim Shady").

In 2002, Eminem again courted controversy by moving up the release date of his third LP, The Eminem Show, in order to frustrate attempts by Internet pirates to distribute his album for free. Though the album won a Best Rap Album Grammy, the perennially controversial singerwas booed at the MTV Video Music Awards before walking away with four trophies at New York's Radio City Music Hall. His first Hollywood movie, 8 Mile, debuted in November 2002 to rave reviews. The film's hard-charging rap hit, "Lose Yourself," scored a surprise Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003. Beating out such mainstays as U2 and Paul Simon, it was the first Oscar ever bestowed on a hip-hop artist. In 2004, Eminem released his follow-up album, Encore, to rave reviews.

The controversial rapper’s tumultuous personal life and legal struggles made headlines beginning in June 1999, less than a week after the platinum debut of The Marshall Mathers LP, when he was arrested after a brawl outside a Detroit nightclub. After pleading guilty to carrying a concealed weapon, a Michigan judge sentenced the rapper to two year's probation and ordered him to undergo counseling and drug testing. In September 1999, Eminem's mother, Debbie Mathers-Briggs, filed a $10 million lawsuit against her son. Mathers-Briggs alleged that Eminem had slandered her on The Slim Shady LP, implying she was an unstable drug user. Though she offered to settle for $2 million, Eminem rejected the settlement and the case will go to trial.

Eminem’s tempestuous relationship with his wife, Kim, whom he married in 1999 but had lived with for years before that, served as the subject of several of his songs, including “Kim,” which portrayed a violent argument between the couple. In July 2000, Mathers was hospitalized after attempting suicide. A month later, Eminem filed for divorce; Mathers sought $10 million and full custody of their daughter, Hailie Jade Scott, born in 1995. In a settlement, Eminem agreed not to seek custody of the young girl and Mathers dropped her lawsuit. Though the couple reconciled in December of that year, their truce was shortlived, as Mathers filed for divorce in early March 2001. After a second reconciliation, the couple remarried on January 14, 2006.