Skip to main content

Award-winning rapper Eminem rose to fame at the turn of the millennium with his hit songs and raw rap talent, earning him accolades from the Grammys to the Oscars. But it was a long road to the top, and his journey didn’t come without hard times.

Eminem, who had a tumultuous childhood, posing for a photo
Eminem | Michel Linssen/Redferns

Eminem’s childhood was filled with ups and downs

Although Eminem became known as a rough-and-tough rapper, he wasn’t exactly the most popular kid in school. In a 2011 interview with Anderson Cooper, Em opened up about his younger days. As a child, he moved around between Michigan and Missouri as he was raised by different family members, as his mother was addicted to prescription painkillers.

“I would change schools two, three times a year and that was probably the roughest part,” he said. “[I got] beat up in the bathroom, beat up in the hallways, shoved in the lockers, just, for the most part, being the new kid.” He was once beaten so badly that he spent 10 days in a coma in the hospital.

One instance of his physical trauma was immortalized in “Brain Damage” on his sophomore album The Slim Shady LP. “[He used to] beat the s*** out of me,” he told Rolling Stone in 1999. “I was in fourth grade, and he was in sixth. One time, he came running across the schoolyard and hit me so hard into this snowbank that I blacked out.” 

Eminem found rapping as an escape

Eminem first got into hip-hop from his mother’s half brother Ronnie Polkingharn. According to Music Spotlight magazine, Polkingharn had Eminem — then just 12 years old — listen to Ice-T’s song “Reckless” from the soundtrack for the 1984 movie Breakin’. He fell in love and started listening to artists including the Beastie Boys, Rakim, Masta Ace, LL Cool J, and N.W.A.

When he was 14, he started rapping with his friend Mike Ruby. Together, Mike and Marshall adopted the name M&M, which Marshall eventually took for himself and became Eminem. When Em dropped out of school in 1989, he and Ruby set up a studio in Ruby’s basement. Music ended up becoming Eminem’s savior.

“If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down,” Eminem told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. “I didn’t have nothin’ going for me… School, home…Until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.”

Related

Eminem Calls Getting Tricked by Someone Who Said They Worked for a Hip-Hop Label ‘The Lowest Point’ of His Career

He went on to become a best-selling rapper

Eminem released his debut album Infinite in 1996 and worked hard to get his name out there as an artist. His breakout came in 2000 with his third album The Marshall Mathers LP, the follow-up to The Slim Shady LP released the previous year. In 2002, he made his film industry debut with 8 Mile, a film inspired by his early life and rise to fame in Detroit; the movie’s song “Lose Yourself” earned Eminem an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The Eminem Show, released that same year, is the best-selling rap album of all time.

Two decades later, Eminem proved his status in the industry when he took the stage alongside fellow hip-hop icons Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar at the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show.

Best in Music