Slim Shady made a Missouri-born kid hip-hop's top seller
Marshall Mathers, born 1972, grinding through Infinite and the Slim Shady EP before Aftermath fame. The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show each topped a million first-week sales, and estimated career totals above 220 million records crown him history's best-selling rapper.
Eminem is an American rapper, songwriter, producer, and executive known for rapid flow and socially pointed writing. After Infinite (1996) and the Slim Shady EP (1997), he signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath and broke through with The Slim Shady LP (1999). Two follow-ups—his 2000 Marshall Mathers LP and 2002 Eminem Show—each moved more than one million copies in their opening U.S. week. Earlier and side projects tied him to New Jacks, Soul Intent, Outsidaz, and D12, plus a partnership with Royce da 5'9" billed as Bad Meets Evil. The 2002 film 8 Mile cast him in a dramatized self-portrait; soundtrack single Lose Yourself topped charts and won a major film-song Oscar.
Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, after his mother's seventy-three-hour labor, he was the only child of Debbie Nelson and Marshall Mathers Jr., once members of the band Daddy Warbucks. Mother and son moved among Missouri and Michigan towns—rarely more than a year or two per house—before settling in Detroit when he was twelve. Fights with his mother, a severe childhood assault by bully D'Angelo Bailey later recounted in Brain Damage, and comic-book ambitions preceded his discovery of hip-hop via uncle Ronnie Polkingharn's Breakin' soundtrack gift.
Commercial dominance followed: eleven Billboard 200 number-one albums, five Hot 100 number ones, and among the highest U.S. certifications, including multiple diamond albums. Conscious and political streaks sit beside alter-ego shock comedy, a tension that made him both a lightning rod and a metric for rap's mainstream ceiling.
Source: Eminem
