Eminem

Name:	Marshall Mathers
Also Known As:	Eminem, Em, Slim Shady, Evil
Occupation:	Rapper, songwriter, producer, record executive, actor
Medium:	Music, film
Works:	8 Mile, The Death of Slim Shady, Music To Be Murdered By: Side B, Music To Be Murdered By, Kamikaze, Revival, SHADYXV, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Recovery, Relapse: Refill, Relapse, Eminem Presents: The Re-Up, Encore, The Eminem Show, The Marshall Mathers LP, The Slim Shady LP, The Slim Shady EP, Infinite
Official Website(s):	Official Site
Fan Website(s):
On Fanlore:	Related pages

Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), commonly known by his rap name Eminem and the name of his alter ego persona, Slim Shady, is a American Grammy award-winning rapper, producer and actor. Since his first major studio album The Slim Shady LP debuted in 1999, he has released eleven solo albums, one EP, two albums with rap group D12, one EP with rap duo Bad Meets Evil, two greatest hits compilations, and numerous collaborations with other artists.

To fan culture, he is most notable for coining the term "stan" as a term referring to a fan, a neologism originating from his iconic 2000 single "Stan" which made its way into internet vernacular around the beginning of the social media era.

The protagonist of most of Eminem's music is Slim Shady, a drug-abusing alter-ego representing Eminem's rage and fame, sometimes depicted as a serial killer. Due to his white skin, impoverished background and "trailer park gothic" themes, Eminem is considered an icon of "white trash" culture, but as a hip-hop artist his fanbase is also noted for its racial diversity, something that often leads him to be compared to Elvis Presley.

Eminem's Y2K-era mainstream career was dominated by controversy regarding his shocking, sometimes misogynistic and homophobic lyrics, and his attacks on various pop stars such as 'NSync, the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, along with threats against rival rappers and political figures. He was also well known for his autobiographical storytelling about his rough childhood with mother Debbie, his fraught relationship with his ex-wife Kim, his half-brother Nate, and children Hailie Jade, Alaina and Stevie. During this period, the combination of his skin colour, microphone technique, brooding yet funny subject matter, MTV-friendly music videos, and boyish looks and personality gave him an audience crossing typical genre lines, resulting in his fandom overlapping with Hip-Hop RPF, Popslash, nu-metal Bandom and even Boy Band Slash.

Becoming reclusive as a means to escape his overpowering fame, Eminem returned to the mainstream in the late 2000s after getting clean of his drug addiction. With his once troubled outlook healed by recovery and his personal life at peace, his music began to focus on technical virtuosity, sentimental and inspiring themes, and collaborations with pop artists like Rihanna. However, his remaining penchant for insulting celebrities led to a reignited rivalry with Mariah Carey, and his bad-taste subject matter and foregrounded whiteness continued to attract criticism on feminist and social justice grounds.

In 2017, Eminem came under a flood of criticism from former fans, critics and younger rappers, who objected to his outdated musical and comedic style, and his polemics against the US President Donald Trump - a typically controversial stance which led to Eminem being cross-examined by the FBI and alienating much of the large rural white demographic of his fanbase. By now middle-aged, Eminem responded in 2018 by switching to a harder, trap-influenced style to diss numerous younger rappers of the day, most significantly Machine Gun Kelly. This introduced Eminem to a new, younger audience, resulting in several TikTok hits, collaborations with youth brands like Fortnite and Lyrical Lemonade, and his once again becoming a popular subject for fic, art, fancams and memes.

Eminem starred as Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith in the 2002 semi-autobiographical film 8 Mile, inspired by his experiences growing up in Detroit and trying to break into the rap scene. He is also known for his charity work, and in recent years has encouraged his fanbase to organise in favour of gun control, abortion rights and justice for Black victims of police violence.

Fandom references

Eminem's music is unusual among musical artists for how often it directly addresses his public persona and fan responses to his work. He has written multiple entire albums about his influence on his fans, whether positive or negative, and -- increasingly as his music fell out of favour with critics and tastemakers -- his battles with his anti-fandom. A lot of his preferred subject matter revolves around culture debates similar to common fandom discourse, such as censorship, child inappropriate media online, the ethics of writing about taboo subjects, and boundaries between fiction and reality. In the 2020s, some of his material began to ridicule cancel culture and puriteens.

Eminem's song "Stan" (2000) is a song and video depicting an intense parasocial relationship, written and rapped from the point of view of a fan who self-harms, sees Slim Shady as the only person who understands him, and who wants to "be together" with him. Despite the intensity of Stan's devotion to Slim, his actual interpretation of Eminem's artistic project is questionable, as he seems to believe that his shock comedy lyrics are literally what he is like in real life. Eminem told Muzik magazine in 2000 that the song was inspired by real fan interactions he had endured:

There are people who write saying they're into hurting themselves. They're cult people, fucking devil worshippers, who say I'm right next to Satan in their thoughts. I've had skinheads and KKK members on my case, telling me they love my shit and how I'm one of them.

In 2024, long after the term 'stan' became generalised to mean social media fandom, Eminem announced plans to make a documentary about his own fandom, called Stans. Shady Films put out a casting call in April 2024 soliciting Eminem's fans for a chance to be featured in the documentary.

Eminem occasionally uses fandom slang in his raps. In his verse on the 2014 song "Vegas" (with Royce da 5'9), Eminem (rapping in character as Slim Shady) shouts "squee!" to describe his excitement at getting to sexually menace Iggy Azalea. While having created the Stan concept to describe a specific character, Eminem used the word 'Stan' as a general insult for a crazy fan as early as 2002 (the clean/video version of "Without Me" -- "Moby, you can get stomped by Obie, you thirty-six bald-headed Stan, blow me"), and used it in its more neutral modern sense in 2020 ("Marsh" -- "I stan Redman, X-Clan and I'm a Treach fan"; "Alfred's Theme" -- "if I ever double-crossed my fans and lost my stans, I'd probably pop five Xans, go into my garage, start my van, inhale as much carbon monoxide and exhaust I can, and doze off").

Slash

Around the turn of the Millennium, public fascination with Eminem's homophobic lyrics, lifelong history of being bullied, dyed hair and piercings inspired satirical, erotic fiction and art from gay men paralleling his personality to that of a stereotypical closeted gay man. Examples include the comedic website fuckeminem.com by comedian Gay Boy Ric, "Eminem Is Gay" by Chris T-T and "Dear Marshall" by Scott Thompson. The English band Pet Shop Boys wrote a song called "The Night I Fell In Love" about Eminem having sex with a male fan after a concert. The speculation was at times conspiratorial, similar to later, more famous theories about musicians like Gaylor theory. Articles speculating about Eminem's sexuality were printed in The New York Times, homophobic Flash animations were published on Newgrounds, and queer activists such as Peter Tatchell and Mark Simpson considered whether Eminem's apparent homophobia disguised a deeper longing. Eminem has alluded to this theory in some of his work, joking about it in numerous lyrics and playing himself as an openly gay man in the 2014 movie The Interview. Like a few other celebrities whose sexuality has been heavily subject to fan scrutiny (such as Misha Collins), Eminem had to put out a public statement clarifying that he had been joking in a 2017 interview in which he claimed to be a regular user of the gay dating app Grindr.

Due to Eminem's career bringing him into negative contact with pop stars of the day, his Real Person Slash fandom started out largely as a spin-off/crossover with Popslash, with writers pairing him with characters from 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. Nsyncgrrl's JC Chasez/Eminem series The Way I Am and Lucy Hale's Eminem Series, which paired him with Chris Kirkpatrick, are two popular examples. Eminem/AJ McLean (Backstreet Boys) had its own mailing list, SlimBoneSlash. (See Popslash for more information on the history of the fandom, which widely overlaps with Emslash).

Other real people he is paired with are his mentor Dr Dre, Proof, his D12 bandmate and friend since childhood, now sadly deceased, and 50 Cent, whose rap career he helped launch when Eminem signed him to his record label Shady Records. Occasionally he is paired with other musicians such as Taylor Hanson, Elton John, and UK popstar Robbie Williams. When Lotrips fandom was in full bloom, writers began pairing him with Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood.

Sometimes Eminem is even paired with characters of his own creation, particularly Stan, the obsessed fan from the song of the same name, and Ken Kaniff, a gay sexual predator who Eminem plays in skits and live performances.

Especially following Eminem's recovery from drug abuse and physical maturation, it has become popular to ship him with himself -- usually in the form of Eminem/Slim Shady ("ShadyEm") or Marshall/Slim ("Marshady"), but also shipping versions of Eminem from his different creative phases over the years (sometimes called "Shadycest"). Due to the extent of Eminem's appearance and personality changes, the distinction between shipping Eminem or Marshall with his younger self and shipping him with Slim Shady is often intentionally ambiguous.

Eminem has also been paired with fictional characters from other fandoms, including Brian from Queer As Folk US, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alex Krycek from The X-Files. Slim Slash and Without Me's Restraint series drew a number of X-Files and Fictional Person Fiction fans into RPF and Emslash.

Around the mid-2000s, Eminem slash fandom was centred around the Emslash LiveJournal community and in earlier days, several Yahoo! mailing lists. There are several slash story indexes.

Interest in Eminem slash waned as Eminem reached middle age, adopted a reclusive public profile, reduced references to homosexuality in his lyrics, and fell out of step with a fan culture that increasingly looked on shock content as problematic. However, Eminem's beef with Machine Gun Kelly in 2018, in which both artists' diss tracks incorporated homoerotic taunts, caused a significant uptick of interest in shipping the two of them, mostly written by members of Machine Gun Kelly's fandom. The pairing is referred to as "EMGK" on sites like Tumblr.

It has been noted that, despite Eminem overwhelmingly associating with Black collaborators in real life, slash fandom typically prefers to ship him with white celebrities and characters.

Het

Fics with Marshall's ex-wife Kim were common, as well as Mary Sue inserts and stories pairing him with female groupies and other original characters.

Shadyfiction.com is a het archive and discussion forum. One popular story archived there is Julie's Story, an Em/OFC fic posted 2003 - 2007 by Jenn, the site's owner.

Following "Love The Way You Lie", a high-profile 2010 collaboration between Eminem and Rihanna, fiction shipping the two of them together began to appear on Wattpad.

Meta

Due to being a white man who profits from a Black art form, as well as the shocking lyrical content of his work, Eminem has long been a popular subject for social justice analysis in fannish spaces, mainstream media, academia, and hip-hop cultural debate. Eminem's own music comments on this aspect of his public profile regularly, often expressing guilt, though rarely regret.

In 2001, Andrea Aguilar, a 15-year-old girl who ran an Angelfire fansite dedicated to Eminem (later moved to its own domain), was asked to come on The Today Show to defend Eminem's homophobic lyrics, which led to her getting to meet him. The resulting exposure and connections with Eminem's team led Aguilar to land a job working at Interscope Records, and then to become a hip-hop journalist working for HipHopDX, Pigeons & Planes, and other outlets.

In the early 2010s, Eminem was one of the celebrities who inspired a callout post in Your Fave Is Problematic, which detailed several of his many overt lyrical transgressions, as well as a few glaring misinterpretations and misattributions. A revealing fault is the allegation that "White America", an anti-racist song in which Eminem argues the backlash against him is due to his association with Black culture, is "Racist nationalist".

8 Mile

There was a small movie fandom for 8 Mile and fics were produced pairing Eminem's character B-Rabbit with Alex (played by Brittany Murphy) and Future (Mekhi Phifer). See the 8 Mile page for details.

Fanworks

Fanfiction

• The Way I Am by NSyncGrrl. A JC/Eminem slash series considered to be the start of Eminem slash. (2001)
• Restraint by Slim Slash and Without Me. X-Files/Eminem RPF crossover slashing Alex Krycek with the rapper Eminem (2002)
• Embers by Ahestele. Taylor Hanson/Eminem slash RPF figure skating high school AU (2004-ongoing)
• Nearer To Thee by Ahestele, rated Mature, Taylor has visions of murders that detective Marshall Mathers is investigating. (Taylor Hanson/Eminem)(2012)

Fanart

• 

  A fanart illustration of Eminem in his early 2000s appearance, posing with a camera, drawn in 2002 by an unknown fanartist (possibly slimshady_429)

• 

  Fanart for "Embers" by Ahestele. Comic strip version of the first chapter; Eminem seeing Taylor ice skating for the first time. Art by Lily Fox (2004)

• 

  A fanart illustration of Eminem in his 2018 appearance, hooded, bearded, and with his "Slit Me" tattoo showing on his right wrist. By Emidrel_Qi (2024)

Communities and Archives

• Emslash LiveJournal Community, located here, founded May 2002
• shadyfiction.com, founded 2003, being revamped 2010, stories are now posted in a locked forum - probaby gen and het only judging by the 2007 archived fic index. Also archived original fiction.
• Eminem Slash Database under construction September 2010
• Slim Slash List 2009
• Emslash Archive, wayback archive, created 2005. Links to stories organised by pairing in the memories of LJ Emslash Archive.
• LJ Emslash Archive created March 2005 by amourality and cucumberstar. Link collection of stories organised in memories by pairing. Lists 63 Eminem slash pairings in 190 journal entries and 318 memories. LJ last updated April 2005.
• Loaded Words, slash, wayback archive, last updated 2004
• Slim Slash's Big List o' Stories, wayback archive, updated 2002-2004?
• Eminem at AO3

Fan Community Nickname

Stans, after his song written from the perspective of an obsessed fan.

Within Eminem's fandom, the term "Stan" can sometimes be used to refer to a specific subculture of fans, mostly teenaged white males, who bleach their hair and imitate Eminem's Y2K-era style and, to a certain extent, persona. While popular enough to be found in most high schools during the turn of the Millennium, this subculture declined over time to the point where the comedy movie 21 Jump Street (2010) mocked it as outdated. However, Eminem's perpetual relevance and popularity with young people in search of identity has kept this subculture from disappearing. Many of these Stans identify so strongly with the Stan label that they get their own copies of the "Slim Shady" tattoo from the "Stan" music video; others just bleach their hair for Eminem-specific events, like concerts or to celebrate a new album release.

Mailing Lists

These are all dead or very quiet now.

• eminemslashfic founded 2004
• nsynceminemslash founded 2001
• SlimBoneSlash - Eminem/AJ McLean, founded 2002
• Boybands_Eminem founded 2001
• Shameless-f was founded by Embitca in November 2002 as "an adult list for Eminem fan fiction. The list is slash-inclined, but het and gen-friendly and cross-over stories with fictional persons are very much encouraged. Stories from G to NC17 are accepted. All stories need to feature Eminem as a main character and all pairings are encouraged, except original characters. On-topic discussion relating to Eminem is welcome so feel free to bring on the meta-commentary [...] MPREG-ers will be taken out back and executed, unless your story is very frelling funny!" It was deleted sometime between December 2003 and December 2004 (anyone know why?).

Related

• Stan
• RPS Writer Interview: Slimslash
• Dido