Yet none of these personas has canceled the other out. Finally, and most furiously, came Slim Shady, the vile, rhyme-sayin', bitch-slayin' MC out to even every score run up against his other selves. Then came 'M&M,' later Eminem, the silver-tongued outcast who forsook fitting in with his white suburban classmates to concentrate on breaking into Detroit's overwhelmingly black rap scene. Rapper extraordinaire, record-setting, multi-platinum recording artist, gay-hater, murder-fantasizer, rebel and creep: How did this onetime 'Mork & Mindy' devotee become the venom-spitting hero of hip-hop?įirst came the runty Marshall Mathers, a quiet, artistic kid bounced from school to school by his overprotective, slightly unhinged mother.
He's a white boy who sounds black, a fatherless child who hates his mother, a trailer-trash wunderkind who spent some of his first millions on a king-size crib across from a mobile-home park.įreud would have a field day with Marshall Bruce Mathers III.
