Rolling Stone 2002

The loose-lipped rapper isn't afraid of his demons. Should you be?
 By Anthony Bozza

Check Out:
Rolling Stone 1999 Interview
Rolling Stone 2004 Interview
Rolling Stone 2010 Interview
Rolling Stone 2013 Interview

In a lounge chair in the presidential suite of a Detroit hotel, Eminem sits as he always does: leaning back in his chair, his legs wide apart, eyes straight ahead. He's dressed head to toe in Air Jordan. Sometimes, he suddenly leans forward to emphasize a point, tucking his hand under his chin or gesturing with a pointed finger, the way he does onstage. His eyes and skin are clear; he looks lean and in shape, and he has an odd, almost angelic glow to him, as if he's been wandering the desert with hip-hop monks. He's been keeping late hours, but it doesn't show, maybe due to better eats. ("Damn, they didn't get me fries with that," he says, eyeing a room-service tuna melt. "I'm off that no-carb diet.") He is relaxed, a king in his castle, ready to greet the world after a year of battle. Since the release of his second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, in May 2000, Eminem has seen his celebrity grow into a sun orbited by his own label (Shady Records), his partners in rhyme D12, a planet of fans, a nascent movie career (with the release of 8 Mile this fall) and an asteroid field of cops, lawyers and judges. In August 2000, he filed for divorce from his twisted muse and the love of his life, Kim, whom he had married only a year earlier. They shared eleven years and now share custody of their six-year-old daughter, Hailie Jade. In June 2000, while he and Kim were still married, Eminem witnessed her kissing another man outside a suburban Detroit bar. After a very short internal debate, Em pistol-whipped the guy and earned himself the first of two felony charges that year - the second came after an altercation involving the ersatz rap group the Insane Clown Posse. The two charges spelled possible jail time for twenty-eight-year-old Marshall Mathers, a gangsta reality he was scared as hell to add to his portfolio. To spice the stew further, Eminem's vitriolic rhymes made him the constant subject of protests by gay -- and women's-rights groups. The threat of prison and his current probation woke him up and grew him up right quick. He stopped drinking and downing purple pills and, as always, took his angst to the studio.

Rolling Stone 2004

THE SERIOUS SIDE OF EMINEM 

Credit: Rollingstone

Check Out:
Rolling Stone 1999 Interview
Rolling Stone 2002 Interview
Rolling Stone 2010 Interview
Rolling Stone 2013 Interview

Eminem has become a family man. during two long conversations over two days in Detroit in October, he constantly mentions the kids he's raising, as any proud father would: His daughter, Hailie Jade, will soon be nine, his niece Alaina is eight, and his half brother, Nate, is eighteen. In October, Marshall Mathers turned thirty-two. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and Detroit without a father figure, but he has grown into a committed parent who goes to school plays and everything. He schedules most of his recording in Detroit and has put his movie career on hold so he can be home with the kids at night.

He has slowed down his drinking and his drug use since two 2000 gun charges that he feared would take him away from Hailie, but his ex, Kim Mathers, has slogged through her own legal morass. In June 2003 she was arrested for possession of cocaine, then failed to show up in court and for a short while hid from the police. Eminem says that explaining the situation to Hailie and Alaina "was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through." At the time of our first interview, Kim was in jail. At the time of our last interview, she had been released. "She's out right now," he said. "We're hoping that stays kosher."

Rolling Stone 2010

Eminem on the Road Back From Hell

Rolling Stone's 2010 look inside the very private world of hip-hop's reclusive genius

By Josh Eells

October 17, 2011 3:55 PM ET

Check Out:
Rolling Stone 1999 Interview
Rolling Stone 2002 Interview
Rolling Stone 2004 Interview
Rolling Stone 2013 Interview

 Eminem  on Rolling Stone cover -  Photo by Mark Seliger for RollingStone.com

Upon arriving at Eminem's recording studio – an anonymous gray hit factory in suburban Detroit – a first-time visitor will be met at his car by a large, possibly armed man named Big 8, who will have been watching from an alley across the street. "Can I help you, sir?" he'll ask, in a tone that does not suggest an eagerness to help. Only after you have proved to not be a threat will you be escorted past the security cameras and heavily reinforced metal door and into the place Eminem calls "my second home."

Inside, Big 8 is all smiles. The studio is a grown-up play land: Punisher comic books, lucha libre masks, a popcorn machine. A large painting of Biggie and 2Pac graces one wall, while a plaque leaning against another celebrates Eminem's status as SoundScan's Artist of the Decade: 32 million albums sold in the past 10 years, trouncing runners-up the Beatles. A dozen years into his career, he remains one of pop's most bankable stars – a rare feat for any artist, and, for a rapper, almost unprecedented.

After half an hour, Eminem emerges from the vocal booth, where he's working on tracks with Dr. Dre for Dre's long-awaited Detox. He's dressed in black cargo shorts and a gray T-shirt, and a diamond crucifix hangs from his neck. His features are delicate, nearly feminine, and his hair is a deep, natural shade of brown. He bears little resemblance to the foulmouthed, bleached-blond Slim Shady who once made it his mission to terrorize America.

"What up, man," he says softly by way of introduction. "I'm Marshall."

It's a rainy afternoon in October, three days before Eminem's 38th birthday. He sits in the cluttered studio office, at a desk strewn with over-the-counter pharmaceuticals – Aleve, 5-Hour Energy – and Ziploc bags of minipretzels. Much has been made of the rapper's volatile temper, not least by Eminem himself (he once spent two years on probation for felony weapons charges after an altercation outside a bar), but in conversation he's thoughtful and polite, albeit not in a way you'd mistake for friendliness. There's little evidence of the prankster you hear on his records, and when discussing his personal life, he has a tendency to retreat, gazing at the floor and covering his mouth like a football coach hiding his plays.

Our conversation is interrupted by frequent bathroom breaks. Eminem loves Diet Coke, which he guzzles obsessively from a soda fountain in the lobby. At one point, he fills a 16-ounce cup nearly to the brim, then sets it down next to another full cup he'd forgotten he had. He's a chain drinker, in other words, and as a result he pees constantly. Asked why he prefers fountain drinks to cans, he turns serious. "There's aspartame in the cans," he says. "They say it's been known to cause cancer, so I cut that shit out. There's no aspartame in the fountain."

Rolling Stone 2013

Eminem Q&A Exclusive: The Making of 'The Marshall Mathers LP 2'

In these cover story outtakes, Slim Shady goes deep on the creative process behind his new album

By Brian Hiatt
November 1, 2013 2:10 PM ET

Check Out:

Rolling Stone 1999 Interview

Rolling Stone 2002 Interview

Rolling Stone 2004 Interview

Rolling Stone 2010 Interview

Eminem was just a couple of days away from finishing his new album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (due November 5th), when we spoke in his suburban Detroit studio in early October. In these outtakes from the upcoming Rolling Stone cover story, which will hit stands November 22nd, he talks about the recording process, going blonde, his wicked sense of humor and much more.

Are you feeling good about the album at this point?
Um, that's a tough question, man. For the most part, yeah. But I don't know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it. Like I hear 'Oh fuck! I could have done this better or that better!' And I'll work it to death. Obviously if I wasn't comfortable with it, I wouldn't put it out. But from the beginning, ever since my career started, I don't know if I've ever been totally like, this is completely it.

Rolling Stone 1999

Check Out:

Rolling Stone 2002 Interview
Rolling Stone 2004 Interview
Rolling Stone 2010 Interview
Rolling Stone 2013 Interview

In three short months, twenty-four year old Marshall Bruce Mathers III has gone from white trash to white hot. 

The Michigan rapper who calls himself Eminem - and whose debut The Slim Shady LP, sold 480,000 copies in its first two weeks - was a $5.50-an-hour cook in a Detroit grill before his obscenity-strewn, gleefully violent, spastic, hilarious and demented rhymes landed him in the studio with rap honcho Dr. Dre. 

The blue-eyed MC is dealing with the instant fame and simultaneous criticism well enough -- much better, actually, than he is dealing with the fifth of Bicardi he downed an hour ago. On a chilly Friday night in New York, he emerges bleary-eyed from the bathroom in his manager's office. "I just threw up everything I had," he says in his slow-roll drawl, which is a bit slower at the moment. "All I ate today was that slice of pizza. Feel good now, though." 

His manager exhales slowly with relief. Eminem has three club gigs tonight, and the first one starts in less than an hour. The crew (nine, including DJ Stretch Armstrong and Dennis the security guard) ambles toward the elevator. Downstairs awaits Eminem's partner in rap, Royce the 5'9, who looks to be about that and has seven people of his own in tow. Em hops into a gigantic ant white limo as fellow honky Armstrong cops a rhyme from Eric Clapton's Cream. "In the white room, with white people and white rappers," he bellows. A minute later there's a knock on the window and one of Royce's posse gives Em the first of the three hits of ecstasy he will consume over the course of the night. Down it goes in a swallow of ginger ale as the car zooms off towards Staten Island. 

Out on New Dorp Lane, there is a crowd of kids, a mere fraction of the number already inside the Lane Theater. The all-ages show is packed, and Eminem is the evening's main course. The mob is being controlled by the club's security, but when the rapper moves inside, the burly dudes are no match for the crush of shouting teens. "You look good!" one girl shouts. "Oh, my God, he looks even better in person," shrieks another. Everywhere, kids have tiny glow sticks in their mouths, which, here in the dark, look like neon braces. At the back of the club, up a ladder, is the minute-dressing room, where the very proud owner of the club is waiting. "Hey, nice to meet ya," he says. "My daughter told me to get Eminem, so I got Eminem. It's her fourteenth birthday. Hey, say hi to her and her friends."