Marshall Bruce Mathers III, known professionally as Eminem, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Eminem’s global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music.
While much of his transgressive work during the late 1990s and early 2000s made him widely controversial, he came to be a representation of popular angst of the American underclass, and has been cited as an influence for many artists of various genres. After his debut album Infinite (1996) and the extended play Slim Shady EP (1997), Eminem signed with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP.
His next two releases, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002), were worldwide successes. Eminem made his debut in the film industry with the musical drama film 8 Mile (2002), playing a fictionalized version of himself, and his track “Lose Yourself” from its soundtrack won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making him the first hip hop artist ever to win the award.
Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time. Billboard named him the Artist of the Decade (2000-2009). He has won numerous awards. He has had ten number-one albums on the Billboard 200 – which all consecutively debuted at number one on the chart, making him the first artist to achieve this – and five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
Some of the best quotes from Eminem are listed below.
- “A normal life is boring.” – Eminem
- “And I am, whatever you say I am. If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?” – Eminem
- “And to the rest of the world, God gave you them shoes to fit you, so put them on and wear them. Be yourself man, be proud of who you are.” – Eminem
- “Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.” – Eminem
- “Be proud of who you are.” – Eminem
- “Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert’s Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.” – Eminem
- “Behind every successful person lies a pack of haters.” – Eminem
- “Cause sometimes, you just feel tired. Feel weak. And when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you. You gotta find that inner strength, and just pull that shit out of you. And get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter.” – Eminem
- “Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They’re only powerful when you got your back turned.” – Eminem
- “Don’t ever try to judge me dude, you don’t know what the f**k I’ve been through.” – Eminem
- “Don’t let them say you ain’t beautiful. They can all get f****d, just stay true to you.” – Eminem
- “Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.” – Eminem
- “For anyone who’s ever been through s**t in their lives, ’til they sit and they cry at night, wishin’ they’d die, ’til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe.” – Eminem
- “From the beginning, it wasn’t about the ends. It was about busting raps and standing for something.” – Eminem
- “Have you ever loved someone so much you’d give an arm for? Not the expression. No, literally give an arm for!” – Eminem
- “Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.” – Eminem
- “I act like sh*t don’t phase me, inside it drives me crazy. My insecurities could eat me alive.” – Eminem
- “I can see you’re sad, even when you smile, even when you laugh. I can see it in your eyes, deep inside you wanna cry.” – Eminem
- “I didn’t have nothin’ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.” – Eminem
- “I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.” – Eminem
- “I don’t do ‘black music,’ I don’t do ‘white music’…I make fight music, for high school kids.” – Eminem
- “I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.” – Eminem
- “I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.” – Eminem
- “I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.” – Eminem
- “I just can’t sit back and wallow, in my own sorrow, but I know one fact: I’ll be one tough act to follow.” – Eminem
- “I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.” – Eminem
- “I started learning how to not be so angry about things, learning how to count my f—ing blessings instead. By doing that, I’ve become a happier person, instead of all this self-loathing I was doing for a while.” – Eminem
- “I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.” – Eminem
- “I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.” – Eminem
- “I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I’m going to grow artistically.” – Eminem
- “I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.” – Eminem
- “I’d do whatever it takes, when I’m with you I get the shakes. My body aches when I ain’t with you I have zero strength.” – Eminem
- “I’m just a little bit sicker than the average individual I think.” – Eminem
- “I’m standing up, I’mma face my demons, I’m manning up, I’mma hold my ground.” – Eminem
- “I’m supposed to be the soldier who never blows his composure. Even though I hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, I ain’t even supposed to show it, my crew ain’t supposed to know it.” – Eminem
- “I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.” – Eminem
- “If I could take it all back now, I wouldn’t. I would have done more s*** people said I shouldn’t.” – Eminem
- “If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.” – Eminem
- “If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.” – Eminem
- “Imma be what I set out to be without a doubt undoubtedly.” – Eminem
- “In my mind I’ma fighter, my heart’s a lighter, my soul is the fluid. My flow sparks it right up.” – Eminem
- “It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.” – Eminem
- “It happens all the time. They take your heart and steal your life. And it’s as though you feel you’ve died ’cause you’ve been killed inside. But yet you’re still alive, which means you will survive.” – Eminem
- “Just promise you’ll think of me, every time you look up in the sky and see a star.” – Eminem
- “Let me self-empower you. When you’re down and they’re try’na clown the f**k outta you. And you feel like you’re running out of fuel. I’ll show you how to use doubt as fuel.” – Eminem
- “Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip?” – Eminem
- “Love is just a word, but you bring it definition.” – Eminem
- “Maybe one day we’ll all wake up and this will just be a dream.” – Eminem
- “Nobody asked for life to deal us with these bulls**t hands we’re dealt. We’ve gotta take these cards ourselves and flip them don’t expect no help.” – Eminem
- “Nobody knows me I’m cold, walk down this road all alone. It’s no one’s fault but my own, it’s the path I’ve chosen to go.” – Eminem
- “Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?” – Eminem
- “People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.” – Eminem
- “Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.” – Eminem
- “Sometimes you just gotta let s*** go and say ‘To hell with it’ and move on.” – Eminem
- “Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.” – Eminem
- “Straighten up little soldier, stiffen up that upper lip. What are you crying about? You got me.” – Eminem
- “That’s why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it.” – Eminem
- “The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.” – Eminem
- “The moment I used my adversity to my advantage, my career exploded.” – Eminem
- “The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.” – Eminem
- “The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually, when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‘Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do’.” – Eminem
- “There is no mountain I can’t climb. There’s no tower too high. No plane that I can’t learn how to fly.” – Eminem
- “There was a while when I was feeling like, ‘Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this’.” – Eminem
- “There was certainly, like, a rebellious, like, youthful rage in me. And there was also the fact of no getting away from fact that I am white, and you know, this is predominantly black music, you know.” – Eminem
- “There’s no limit on how far I would go, no boundaries, no lengths.” – Eminem
- “They can trigger me. But they’ll never figure me out.” – Eminem
- “Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.” – Eminem
- “To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.” – Eminem
- “Trust is hard to come by. That’s why my circle is small and tight. I’m kind of funny about making new friends.” – Eminem
- “Trust is hard to come by. That’s why my circle is small and tight. I’m kind of funny about making new friends.” – Eminem
- “Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.” – Eminem
- “We’ll walk this road together, through the storm. Whatever weather, cold or warm.” – Eminem
- “When I say or do something, I do it. I don’t give a damn what you think. I’m doing this for me.” – Eminem
- “When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.” – Eminem
- “Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.” – Eminem
- “Yeah, it’s been a ride I guess I had to go to that place to get to this one. Now some of you might still be in that place. If you’re trying to get out, just follow me, I’ll get you there.” – Eminem
- “You better lose yourself in the music. The moment, you own it, you better never let it go. You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.” – Eminem
- “You can make something of your life. It just depends on your drive.” – Eminem
- “You can try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay ’em, But you won’t take the sting out these words before I say ’em” – Eminem
- “You don’t get another chance, life is no Nintendo game.” – Eminem
- “You gotta find that inner strength and just pull that s*** out of you. And get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall on your face and collapse.” – Eminem
- “You know, not to sound corny or nuthin’, but I felt like a fighter comin’ up, man. I felt like, you know, I’m being attacked for this reason or that reason, and I gotta fight my way through this.” – Eminem
- “You’ve got enemies? Good, that means you actually stood up for something.” – Eminem
