Eminem — Bullied And Abandoned
Wikimedia CommonsEminem (right) in 1998.
When Eminem burst onto the hip-hop scene in 1999, the 26-year-old rapper espoused his love for the craft and came with receipts for the dues he had paid. With bleached blonde hair and a razor-sharp tongue, his image was as shocking as his skills — while his harsh childhood was chronicled truthfully on wax.
Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III on Oct. 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the future rapper was abandoned by his father as an infant. His mother Debbie bore a second son by another man who would walk out on the family as well. Mathers’ destitute mother drifted aimlessly before settling in Detroit, Michigan.
“I would change schools two, three times a year,” recalled Mathers. “That was probably the roughest part about it all.”
When he tried to write his father, his letters came back marked return to sender. He was regularly bullied as an outcast and failed to make friends. Classmate DeAngelo Bailey beat him so badly in January 1982 that Mathers was hospitalized for four days and had to relearn how to tie his shoes. Nightmares and anti-social behavior followed.
Mark Weiss/Getty ImagesEminem’s mother Debbie Mathers, who sued him (and settled out of court) for claiming she spent the majority of his childhood on drugs.
On welfare and a chronic bingo gambler, Debbie Mathers often left Mathers with his uncle, Ronnie Polkinghorn. Ronnie introduced Mathers to hip-hop and became a trusted father figure. But he also lived with depression and died by suicide when Mathers was 17 years old. Repeatedly failing ninth grade, Mathers dropped out in hopes of making it as a rapper.
“I found that no matter how bad I was at school, like, and no matter how low my grades might have been at some times, I always was good at English,” he said.
“I just felt like I wanna be able to have all of these words at my disposal, in my vocabulary at all times whenever I need to pull ’em out. You know, somewhere, they’ll be stored, like, locked away.”
He spent years flipping burgers. He was mugged frequently, and the house he shared with his girlfriend was regularly burglarized. Mathers would compete in rap battles and win, but major records labels rejected him because he was white. With a baby on the way and no hope in sight, he attempted suicide.
Then, in 1997, Dr. Dre heard Eminem’s Slim Shady EP and immediately wanted to work with him. Two years later, Eminem released The Slim Shady LP, which catapulted him to stardom. The Christmas before Dre discovered Mathers, he had only $40 to buy his daughter a gift.
