Considered by many experts to be among the best rappers of all time, Eminem has proved himself to be worthy of praise many times over his lengthy career. Both a massive star who has sold loads of albums and a critical darling, it sometimes feels like Eminem can’t do anything wrong when he gets in the recording studio.
Unlike many of today’s biggest stars, Eminem seems to be completely true to himself which is an extremely admirable quality. Unfortunately, his willingness to push just about every boundary has resulted in some extremely problematic decisions on his behalf from time to time. With that in mind, it is time to get to this list of 7 things fans choose to ignore about Eminem and 8 reasons he’s a legend.
15 Legend: Award-Worthy
At the end of the day, most musical artists care more about selling albums and making a mark than relatively trivial things like winning awards. That said, when an artist manages to win loads of trophies it certainly says a lot about what they’ve achieved. With that in mind, it is mindblowing that according to Wikipedia, Eminem has won 15 Grammys, 8 AMAs, and 17 Billboard Music Awards. On top of that, he has nabbed a long list of other trophies including MTV Europe’s Music Award for Global Icon.
14 Ignore: Rap God Lawsuit
Absolutely a stellar track, there is no doubt that Eminem’s “Rap God” will go down in history. However, the Chicago rap trio Hotstylz clearly aren’t fans of the song since they sued Eminem for using a sample of their hit “Lookin’ Boy” in the tune without their permission. Worse yet, Eminem failed to credit Hotstylz for the sample which is hugely disrespectful to his fellow artists. For those reasons, the trio took Eminem to court.
13 Legend: Beat The Odds
Throughout Hollywood history, there are endless examples of musicians who’ve decided to give acting a try only to give disastrous performances. Thankfully for Eminem and his legion of fans, 8 Mile was the first and to date the only movie he has starred in and it was excellent. Actually an Oscar winner for his original song from the 8 Mile soundtrack, “Lose Yourself”, Eminem also gave a surprisingly soulful acting performance in the film.
12 Ignore: Aiming Down
Given the fact that Eminem is an outstanding performer and he can throw out insults with the best of them, you’d think that he would only bother tussling with the best. Instead, throughout his career, Eminem has released diss tracks about a slew of people who arguably are beneath him. After all, who thought that people like Ja Rule, Iggy Azalea, Machine Gun Kelly, and Moby had a chance during their feuds with Eminem?
11 Legend: Staying Clean
Over the years, the music industry has lost far too many artists due to their battles with addiction. Upfront about his former pill addiction, Eminem has said that in the past he took lots of pills simply to “feel normal”. As we all know, addiction is a lifelong battle but after a near-fatal overdose Eminem got himself clean and in 2018 he posted an image of his 10-year Alcoholics Anonymous chip.
10 Ignore: His Treatment Of The Women In His Life
Of course, we have personally never spent time with Eminem so we have no idea how he treats the people in his life on a day to day basis. However, he has chosen to release several songs in which threatened the safety of his mother and ex-wife and he has insulted them endlessly in his music.
9 Legend: Giving Back
While Eminem has always been known for his boisterous ways, his softer side often comes out when talking about anyone that grew up in poverty the way he did. In fact, he even founded the Marshall Mathers Foundation, a charity that gives to food banks and participates in fundraisers to help Michigan’s disadvantaged youths.
8 Ignore: The Wrong Side Of History
After it came out that Chris Brown beat Rihanna, it should’ve been pretty easy for everyone to know that he was completely in the wrong. Despite that, at one point Eminem recorded an early version of the song “Things Get Worse” which included the lyrics “Of course I side with Chris Brown, I’d beat a b___h down too”. While we appreciate the fact that Eminem removed that lyric from the final version of the song, it is pretty appalling he wrote those words, to begin with.
7 Legend: Among The Best
Never shy about singing his own praises, Eminem has talked a lot about how great he is but it is nearly impossible to argue that he is wrong. After all, Eminem was voted the best rapper of all time by readers of the website ranker.com. While we stop short of thinking he deserves that accolade, the fact remains that he is in the conversation which says an awful lot.
6 Ignore: Misogynistic Lyrics
On the one hand, we know that a lot of Eminem’s early songs weren’t meant to be taken overly seriously. Despite that, it is pretty amazing how misogynistic many of his early tunes are. For example, in “Low Down, Dirty” Eminem actually rapped about taking a woman’s life and then committing an act of necrophilia and that is just one of his many misogynistic songs.
