Before there was Eminem or Slim Shady, there was Marshall Mathers. As a child, the rap icon actually had little exposure to hip-hop music until his Uncle Ronnie came along. Forever changing the course of music, Ronnie gifted his nephew the soundtrack to the 1980s movie Breakin‘, featuring Ice-T.
In 1999, Eminem sat down for a conversation with Q magazine. During the chat, he revealed that Ice-T’s vocals on the beloved film soundtrack, specifically the song “Reckless”, were the first time he heard rap. That changed everything for the future Slim Shady.
Sadly, Ronnie took his own life in 1991. “I don’t know whether it takes balls or it takes a f***ing coward to kill themselves,” Eminem told Q. “I ain’t figured it out yet. With my uncle, I just wish I could’ve talked to him before he did it to find out what the f*** was really on his mind.”
Eminem had reportedly become well known in the Detroit hip-hop scene by the mid-90s. A few years after Ronnie’s death, Eminem recorded his first record, Infinite. The project was done with a local label, and only around 1,000 copies were pressed.
“I knew how to write rhymes,” Eminem said, “but I couldn’t really count it as a first album. It wasn’t on a scale that really mattered.”
Eminem’s first record was a bomb
Unfortunately, the album was not a success. This caused Eminem to go into a serious mental crisis as his girlfriend at the time, Kim, was pregnant with their daughter, Hailie Jade. He worried that he’d spend the rest of his life toiling away in mediocre jobs and wouldn’t be able to sufficiently provide for his family.
Using his art as a way of expressing himself, Eminem went into the studio and recorded the song “Rock Bottom”. The track was a way for him to sort through everything that was weighing on him at that time in his life. He later re-recorded the song for his label debut, The Slim Shady LP, and dedicated it to “all the happy people who have real nice lives and have no idea what it’s like to be broke as f***.”
“At that point in my life, I had nothing,” Eminem confessed. “I felt like robbing somebody or selling drugs to get myself out of the situation I was in.”
He confessed to having “a little pill-popping problem”
Living through a low point and losing out on a record deal when it was discovered he’d been lied to by a mail clerk, Eminem nearly OD’d on Tylenol. “I’m not ashamed to say I had a little pill-popping problem,” he said, “just like someone else I know, who introduced me to ’em by the way.” Thankfully, his system rejected the nearly two dozen pills.
Finally, after so much turmoil and uncertainty, Eminem caught a break in 1997. Rap icon Dr. Dre heard Eminem’s demo, The Slim Shady EP, and signed the young rapper to his Aftermath record label. Two years later, Eminem dropped The Slim Shady LP, and the rest is history.
The post Eminem Pinpoints the Rap Track That Would Shape His Entire Career at Only 9 Years Old appeared first on VICE.
