Eminem

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to grow up with nothing and have to fight to make it big because it wasn't just handed to you? Well, Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known as Eminem or Slim Shady, knows exactly what it is like to lead that type of a life. He knows that life can be extremely tough but if you try hard enough you can make it in anything you want. Eminem is a hero to many people because he has overcome many challenges; such as having a rough childhood, beating his drug addiction, and overcoming adversity leading him to become one of the top rappers in the industry.

Eminem was born on October 17, 1972 in Saint Joseph, Missouri. His mother was only 15 years old at the time of his birth. His father left 18 months after he was born never to return and left Eminem's mother to raise him by herself. Marshall spent his early childhood being shuttled back and forth from Kansas City to Detroit. He finally settled on the east side of Detroit when he was 12. Because he was switching schools every two or three months, it made it very difficult for him to make friends and stay out of trouble. Eminem began rapping at the early age of four. At first it was only putting rhyming words together but later on he moved on and started battling schoolmates in the lunchroom. By the age of 17, he had dropped out of school and had started working on his career to become a rapper.

In August of 2005, Eminem went into rehab because he was using prescription drugs. Eminem was taking Vicodin, Valium and Ambien, and toward the end, which caused his overdose, Methadone. He told New York Times Magazine that he didn't know that he was taking methadone at the time because he would get pills wherever he could, and he would just take anything that anybody had given him. The first time he went to rehab was in Brighton, Michigan. The second time he didn't go to rehab, he just went to a regular hospital for inpatient detox, and then went home. He said he couldn't go back to rehab, because he felt like he was Bugs Bunny in rehab, and when Bugs Bunny walks into rehab, people are going to turn and look. And that is exactly what people did. People at rehab were always stealing his hats, pens, notebooks, asking for autographs, and he couldn't concentrate on his own recovery when people were always bugging him

Throughout Eminem's career he has had a great amount of accomplishments. He has been nominated for over 100 awards and has won a total of 87 awards, including 1 Oscar, 11 Grammys, and countless MTV awards. In order to achieve such great things, he had to overcome many obstacles. Probably the hardest to overcome for him was him being a white rapper. Rap has always been a predominantly black artist genre and it will be a long time before white people in that genre are treated equally. Because Eminem is white many people looked down on him and criticized his rapping before they even have heard him rap. Even though he is white he has never allowed the pressure of racial profiling to impact his state of mind therefore it has never stopped him from pursuing his career.

Even though he started out with basically nothing he has grown into a respected white artist in a mostly black industry. Eminem has obviously overcome some extremely difficult challenges. He now is able to support the 3 children he has and he is able to give them the things he didn't have as a child. He can help them complete their dreams so they don't have to grow up like he was forced to. Eminem may not be my hero but I respect him and the choices he has made in his life. He is somebody that has had to fight for everything they have and none of the things he has accomplished were handed to him.