Guest Blogger: Jeff 2

Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known as Eminem or his darker side slim shady is a “Detroit based rapper who is willing to put anyone in his verbal crosshairs.” (Simon and Schuster, 2001) He was born outside of Kansas City; Missouri never knew his father and was raised by his mother along with his half-brother. After failing 9th grade 3 years in a row he dropped out of school and began competing in freestyle throw downs with his crew the Dirty Dozen. Even though his first album Infinite didn’t get that much attention but his The Slim Shady EP gained the attention of producer Dr. Dre and he signed Eminem to his Interscope imprint, Aftermath. Later the EP expanded into the Dre-coproduced The Slim Shady LP, which debuted on the pop top charts at number three in February 1999, and went on to sell 3 million copies and won Eminem a Grammy for best rap album. One song stood out the most from the LP than most of the others that was the catchy “My Name Is” which was a huge success climbing to number 36 on the hot 100 and later on he wins a Grammy for best rap solo performance. Eminem has produced songs with many other well-known artists throughout his career. Most of his songs are about his life struggles which include not knowing who is father was, his drug addict wife, abusive stepfather and so on. In 2005 Eminem dropped a greatest hits album curtain calls: The Hits, leading some people to believe that Eminem was going to be retiring from the rap game. Eminem later told a radio show "This is the reason that we called it 'Curtain Call', because this could be the final thing. We don't know." In august that year he went to rehab to try and quit his addiction to pain pills. After 4 years of being out of the rap game Eminem dropped his new album in 2009 called Relapse and relapse 2 although it didn’t sell as many copies as its predecessors they both went platinum and re-established him as a force with the pop universe.