Eminem

Born in the US state of Missouri, Marshall Bruce Mathers III and his mother shuttled between the mid-West and Detroit, Michigan. It was not an easy childhood, with poverty and urban violence causing distress while building anger and distrust. Young Marshall later became interested in story telling and by the time he embraced rap at age fourteen he had come up with the stage name M&M, after the candy coated mini-chocolates. The story goes that he preferred the look of that moniker when it was written out phonetically; thus Eminem was born.

Despite conflict and displacement as a child and teen, notwithstanding having been kept in ninth grade for three years, regardless of a schoolyard assault that left him with a brain injury, Eminem is one of the most successful recording artists, ever. His first long-player, The Slim Shady LP, was a US #2 album in 1999 and since then every subsequent album (to 2020’s Music To Be Murdered By) has done even better, topping the American, UK, and Australian charts. He has appeared on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time and 100 Greatest Songwriters Of All Time.

Other interesting facts include his playing of a fictional version of himself in the film 8 Mile, marrying the same person twice (Kimberley Scott in 1999 and again briefly in 2006) and a list of feuds with other artists that has generated millions of 'news' headlines.