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Over the years, Grammy-winning rapper Eminem has been romantically linked to his longtime partner, Kim Scott. They knew each other from a young age and have been married twice. It all started when they were kids growing up in Detroit, Michigan.

Eminem performing at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards
Eminem | M. Caulfield/WireImage

Eminem and Kim Scott grew up together

Both Eminem and Scott had difficult upbringings. As a child, Scott dealt with her stepfather’s alcoholism at home as well as sexual abuse. She and her sister eventually ran away from home when they were just kids, and started living in a youth home in 1987.

Eventually, Scott would find herself living with Eminem and his mother.

Eminem was rapping an LL Cool J song when he met his future wife Kim Scott

Eminem looked back on when he first met Scott in a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone. “I met her the day she got out of the youth home,” he recalled. “I was at a friend’s house, and his sister was friends with her, but she hadn’t seen Kim in a while ’cause she was in the youth home. And I’m standing on the table with my shirt off, on top of their coffee table with a Kangol on, mocking the words to LL Cool J’s ‘I’m Bad.’ And I turn around and she’s at the door. Her friend hands her a cigarette.”

“She’s thirteen, she’s taller than me, and she didn’t look that young. She easily coulda been mistaken for sixteen, seventeen,” he continued. “I said to my friend’s sister, ‘Yo, who was that? She’s kinda hot.’ And the saga began. Now there’s the constant struggle of ‘will I ever meet somebody else that’s gonna be real with me, as real as I can say she’s been with me?'”

After Scott moved into Eminem’s house, the two began an on-and-off relationship that lasted several years. They eventually started a family together in the late ’90s.

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Eminem and LL Cool J’s relationship

Eminem has looked up to LL Cool J since he first started dreaming of becoming a rapper. Over the years, they’ve gotten to work together and Eminem has gotten validation from his onetime idol.

LL Cool J‘s 1987 song “I’m Bad” was a key part of Eminem’s life — and not just for its significance in when he met his future wife. He spoke about how it changed his life in a 2021 episode of MTV’s Behind the Music series.

“When I saw the ‘[I’m] Bad’ video, I was like, ‘the f***?!’ He had the whole package — the look, the swag, the chain, everything! You know, you just wanted to be LL Cool J,” he said. “He was like the first rockstar of rap. I’m like, ‘Yo, I wanted that.’ That is what actually made me want to rap.”

Years later, Eminem wanted to recreate LL Cool J’s style from the video. “Since I was a little kid, I always wanted a chain,” he revealed. “I was recording with Rick Rubin, and I was like, ‘Yo, can you ask LL whee he got his chains from?’ So he had these made and sent them to me. In the ‘[I’m] Bad’ video, these are the same two chains he’s wearing in that video.”

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