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Essay / Eminem: Life Before Fame
Forty-five-year-old Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known by his stage name "Eminem", is an extremely successful actor, rapper, record producer, and songwriter. Over the years, Eminem has grown as an artist, breaking numerous records and receiving countless awards. Some of his biggest achievements include: Becoming the first rapper to receive an Academy Award for "Best Original Song" in 2003, and releasing an album in 2003 called "The Marshall Mather EP" which allowed him to become a world record holder Guinness for "The Best-Selling Rap Album in a Week", and received his sixth "Best Rap Album" award (9 overall) at the 2015 Grammy Awards, making him the most awarded rapper of all time . "The Slim Shady LP" in 1999, "The Marshall Mathers LP" in 2000, "The Eminem Show" in 2002 and "Encore" in 2004 have sold over 30,000,000 copies in the United States alone . He was named the "best-selling rap artist" of the 2000s by Rolling Stones magazine. However, his fame and success did not come effortlessly as he went through a series of trials and tribulations to live the life of luxury that he has now. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Eminem grew up in a house where his father was never around. His father, Marshall Mathers Jr., abandoned his family when he was only three years old. Eminem's father also refused his numerous attempts to contact him when he was a child. As a result, he was raised in a single-parent household by Deborah Mathers. Deborah was never able to stay employed for more than several months at a time, forcing their family to constantly move around as he spent most of his time staying in different public housing projects around Missouri and Detroit, Michigan. “I changed schools two or three times a year. This was probably the hardest part of all. Eminem recalled this in an interview with Anderson Cooper, a CBS journalist. Leaving school so often caused Eminem to develop an itinerant lifestyle that ended up having a large impact on his personality. Therefore, Eminem was never able to form close friendships. During school, he mostly kept to himself, but often altercations with classmates were unavoidable. “Beated in the toilets, beaten in the corridors, pushed into the lockers,” he remembers. “You know, this isn't to sound cheesy or anything, but I felt like a fighter coming in, man. I am being attacked for this or that reason, and I have to fight my way out,” he said. Addressing issues such as bullying is extremely important in his character development and has been equally crucial to his career progression as it teaches him to be self-reliant. Eminem discovered rap in his early teens, and it was through his use of street smarts and "tough talk" where he suddenly realized that rap was his passion. “I knew I wanted to be a rapper when I was about 14.” Eminem attended Lincoln High School in Warren, Michigan, where he struggled in his classes. He failed ninth grade three times and dropped out of high school at age 17. Despite being a mediocre student throughout his education, he always had an affection for language arts. Most of his free time was spent constantly reading books and studying the dictionary. “I discovered that no matter how bad I was at school, and no matter how bad my grades were sometimes,..