Eminem: the Detroit wordsmith with an Oscar and 15 Grammys | Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion

Why fans still care

The Rock Hall calls EMINEM the single best selling artist of the 2000s, and Guinness World Records lists “Rap God” for the most words in a hit single. Behind the numbers is a writer who, as CBS’s 60 Minutes put it, writes all of his own songs.

Early years

Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born on 17 October 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, according to his Recording Academy biography and the Detroit Historical Society. He grew up to become the voice most people now connect with Detroit.

The breakthrough

Producer Jeff Bass told Grantland that the period of meeting Dr. Dre, Who’s Who number 1, began around February 1998. Bass told Grantland that The Slim Shady LP was made in three weeks, mostly in Burbank. Released in 1999, at the 2000 Grammys it won Best Rap Album, and “My Name Is” won Best Rap Solo Performance, his first two Grammys.

Career chapters

1. 1999The Slim Shady LP
2. 2000first two Grammys
3. 2000The Marshall Mathers LP
4. 2002The Eminem Show
5. 2003the Oscar for “Lose Yourself”
6. 2011two albums certified Diamond
7. 2013“Rap God”
8. 2022Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
9. 2024The Death of Slim Shady

Two Diamond albums

The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show were both certified Diamond in March 2011, as XXL and Consequence report. XXL called him the first and only rapper with two Diamond albums at the time. The RIAA database and Consequence both show Curtain Call: The Hits becoming his third Diamond album in March 2022.

Lose Yourself 2002 to 2003

“Lose Yourself” won the Oscar for Best Original Song on 23 March 2003, with music by Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto and lyrics by Eminem, according to the Academy. It spent 12 weeks at number 1 on the Hot 100, as Billboard’s chart history and American Songwriter both show. Bass told Grantland the track’s guitars were later replaced with keyboards.

Rap God 2013

Guinness counts 1,560 words in six minutes and four seconds, about 4.28 words a second, including 97 words in one 15 second stretch.

Still at number 1 2024

Billboard and XXL reported that The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) opened with 281,000 units, his 11th number 1 album on the Billboard 200. The Rock Hall adds that he was the first artist to have ten consecutive number 1 debut albums.

Craft, sound and the studio

The science

On 60 Minutes in 2010 he explained that hard words can be broken down into syllables, “the science”, as he called it. He thinks about rhymes all day and collects ideas on scraps of paper, a habit he calls “stacking ammo”.

Feel over counting

Jeff Bass told Mix in 2000 that Eminem locks onto the kick drum rather than counting bars, and Bass said the Slim Shady sessions ran mostly on a Kurzweil K2000 and Pro Tools.

Stories people still tell

1. Three weeks.

   One of the most talked about debuts in rap was made in about three weeks, by Bass’s account.

Legacy

Dr. Dre, Who’s Who number 1 inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 and wrote on the Rock Hall page that he thinks Eminem is the best MC ever. Eminem has said LL Cool J, Who’s Who number 20, is what made him want to rap in the first place. NME reports that his 2022 collection Curtain Call 2 was led by the single “From the D 2 the LBC”, featuring Snoop Dogg, Who’s Who number 3, on the record.