His real name is Marshall Mathers. "Eminem" comes from his initials, M.M.
He flunked the 9th grade and eventually dropped out of school.
Eminem has two daughters: Hailie Jade and Laney. Hailie is his biological daughter and Laney is Hailie's cousin (Eminem's ex-wife Kim's sister's daughter) who Eminem adopted. He sings about them being sisters in the song "Mockingbird" and they are both featured in the video for the song as well.
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Jaimie - Telford, England
Eminem was a member of the Detroit rap group D12 before he was famous. He kept recording with them even after his solo career took off, releasing an album with them in 2001.
He was sentenced to probation, community service, and a fine for two incidents on the same day in 2000. In the afternoon, he pointed a gun at the road manager of The Insane Clown Posse; that night, he pistol-whipped a man he saw kissing his wife outside a nightclub.
He had trouble getting a visa to perform two shows in Australia in 2001. The Australian Prime Minister tried to keep him out, calling his songs "sickening and offensive."
For a while, he had a cartoon called "Slim Shady World" on the Internet and on DVD. He provided the voice of the title character.
Eminem's first album was released on a local label in 1996. Called Infinite, 1000 copies were pressed and it flopped. The following year, he released The Slim Shady EP, which found the ear of Dr. Dre and led to his deal with Aftermath Records.
He developed a debilitating addition to pills in the mid-'00s. His drugs of choice in his younger years were ecstasy and mushrooms, but after releasing his first album, he started taking Valium and Vicodin. After his good friend, the rapper Proof, died in 2006, Em started taking up to 80 Valiums a night. He eventually got his addiction under control, but says he's lucky to be alive.
D12 member Denaun Porter (Kon Artis) produced most of Eminem's first album, Infinite.
Eminem is consistently one of the most-searched musical acts on the internet, and in 2003 attracted more Google searches than any other artist.
Eminem has a younger half brother named Nathan. they are 14 years apart.
His mother, Debbie, was the target of many of his lyrical darts as he dissed her on songs like "
My Name Is" and "
Cleanin Out My Closet." She filed a lawsuit against him and they remained estranged throughout Eminem's rise to fame, but in 2013 he apologized to her on the track "
Headlights," where he raps about how she didn't deserve his vitriol.
In his early years, he seems to always be in trouble with the police. His first arrest came when he hit a police car with a paintball gun, which was portrayed in a scene from his movie
8 Mile.
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Eminem's win for Best Rap Album in 2004 for
The Eminem Show made him the only rap artist to win three times (previously in 2000 for
The Slim Shady LP and in 2001 for
Marshall Mathers LP). Instead of offering an acceptance speech when he won in 2004, he reeled off a long list of rappers who inspired him, including Ice Cube, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, 2Pac and Dr. Dre.
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Bertrand - Paris, France
EM considers Chris Rock the funniest man alive. His favorite character of his is Pookie from the movie New Jack City.
When he writes his lyrics, he starts at the corner of the paper and writes downward instead of writing on the lines.
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Elma - Chennai, India, for above 2
He drinks massive amounts of Diet Coke, but not out of cans. In his studio, he has a fountain dispenser, because there's no aspartame in the fountain.
He loves vintage video games, and is especially good at Donkey Kong. The movie The King of Kong is one of his favorites.
Starting in 2002, he became addicted to prescription drugs. He tried rehab in 2005, but it didn't take. In 2007, he overdosed on methadone and set out to get clean. His sober date is 4/20/2008.
He adopted his ex-wife Kim's daughter from a previous marriage Whitney, and the daughter of Kim's twin sister.
Despite his profanity-laced songs, Eminem does not allow swearing in his home. "I'm a parent; I have daughters. I mean, how would I really sound as a person like walking around my house [saying] 'Bitch, pick this up!' Profanity around my house, no," Em told 60 Minutes news anchor Anderson Cooper in 2010.
Eminem used to spend many hours at night studying the dictionary so he could expand his vocabulary for his rhymes.
A 2015 report by
Musixmatch named Eminem as the artist with the biggest vocabulary in music, using 8,818 different words across his work. The lyrics site analyzed the top 93 best-selling artists to determine who uses the widest range of language in their tunes. Eminem was also found to have the overall highest words per song ratio of 1018.5.
He says he only did cocaine once, and that was when he wrote and recorded a verse for the 1998 Kid Rock track "F--k Off," which appears on the explicit version of Rock's album Devil Without a Cause.