Is eminem gay in real life

Twenty five years ago, the rapper provoked outrage with his third LP, which shot him to superstardom, and was notorious for its offensive lyrics. Now it has become an even more divisive listen. The Detroit rapper, in the guise of his furious Slim Shady persona, uses this record's intro to encourage naysayers to go "sue me", setting the unapologetic tone for everything that follows.

Warning: this article contains offensive language and descriptions of violence. Lyrically he boasts about getting a machete from OJ Simpson, assaulting his own mother, and being the one who "invented violence", daring outsiders to take these controversial words seriously.

It's shocking to listen to, but the fact his nasal voice sounds like a mixture of a squeaky clown nose and a Midwestern court jester gives everything a cartoonish edge. Released 25 years ago this month, The Marshall Mathers LP was Eminem's ticket to superstardom and, more broadly, a real inflection point for Western pop culture.

This was a moment where a white emcee from Warren, Detroit, was suddenly the most debated artist on planet Earth. A celebrated anti-hero, who could provoke outrage while also shifting tonnes of hummable records in the process: MMLP went on to sell more than 35 million copies worldwide.

Eminem was the parent-advisory sticker provocateur who could include homophobic slurs in his raps — but somehow still sincerely perform alongside Elton John, one of the world's most famous gay musicians, at the Grammys. Entertainment Weekly's Will Hermes perfectly summarised these palpable contradictions in an early MMLP review, calling the album : "Indefensible and critic-proof, is eminem gay in real life and heart-breaking, unlistenable and undeniable.

As he sees it, the rapper's Slim Shady alter-ego had essentially been conceived by Eminem to punch a hole through the political correctness of the era. Everyone, no matter how popular or vulnerable — from puppies to Christopher Reeves to pop stars including boyband N-Sync and Britney Spears — was a target inside Eminem's crosshairs.

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Slim Shady was a sociopathic character envisioned as a sort of MTV generation Frankenstein's monster, out to take down everything in culture that was considered middle-of-the-road. Not everyone accepted this rationale, however. But the shock tactics of the lyrics aside, musically The Marshall Mathers LP made just as big of an impression.

Following its release, many subsequently compared Eminem to Elvis Presley in how he deftly adapted a black artform, rap, and popularised it in Middle America. However Craig Jenkins, a music critic for Vulture magazine, believes there was a fundamental difference between these two artists.

But in there was a huge section of the population who just didn't see themselves in what they were being told to like. Eminem's rebellion, snark, and inappropriateness were all definitely in. The Marshall Mathers LP was the perfect record for this particular moment of disaffection.

When the song was performed live at the MTV VMAs shortly after its release, Eminem was flanked by hundreds of lookalikes in a move that hinted at his total mainstream ubiquity. Whether rapping about corrupt priests Criminal or parents allowing their young children to wear make up Who KnewEminem was that rare artist able to effortlessly mirror underlying US social tensions, believes Jenkins.

To understand how Eminem came to define the earlys zeitgeist with The Marshall Mathers LP, you have to rewind a few years to his entry into the music business. Having grown up with a single mother in a trailer park in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit, a young Marshall Mathers, who was bullied at school for being poor, found solace in the bulletproof raps of artists like Ice-T and LL Cool J.

I'm not trying to give some sob story, like, 'Oh, I've been broke all my life', but people who know me know it's true," Eminem revealed in a interview with Spin magazine. He also explained there were times when friends had to buy him shoes, declaring: "I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour".

This was a white rapper who was truly part of the US's tragic inner-city struggle, and the antithesis to Vanilla Ice, who had come to the fore in the early-'90s and was criticised for embellishing his street ties. Eminem wrote his first lyrics as a teenager, graduating to cult status within Detroit's battle-rap scene, where the witty emcee would astound opponents with his jugular-aiming freestyles.

This period was later immortalised in the Oscar-winning, semi-autobiographical film 8 Mile, which bagged Eminem a best song Oscar for Lose Yourself, and established him as hip hop's Rocky Balboa. He often flipped the slur of being "white trash" on its head in these early battles, turning his biggest weakness into a verbal dagger.

After achieving success in at the celebrated battle-rap competition, The Is eminem gay in real life Olympics, in Los Angeles, Eminem caught the attention of Interscope Records intern Dean Geistlinge, who passed his demo tape over to an instantly impressed Dr Dre. Although it was a commercial success, going on to sell 10 million copies worldwide, and a hungry Eminem chewed through its Dr Dre beats like an angry pitbull — see infectious hit single My Name Is — it's fair to say the lead artist was still a little rough around the edges.

However, with its follow-up a year later, it felt like Eminem was becoming more and more of a potent generational voice, with a clearer three-dimensional backstory. The original artwork for The Marshall Mathers LP sees the rapper sitting on the porch of his down-at-heel childhood home, the windows all boarded up — a portrait that spoke of a fragile American Dream and an artist who represented hope to forgotten working classes, both black and white.