Eminem4

During the time that Kim and Eminem were broken up, they were both involved with other people but she refused to let Em see their daughter. "Marshall would try to see little Hailie and Kim's stepfather met him at the door one day and told him 'you're no good, you're never going to amount to anything and if you ever come here again, I'll kill you,'" Eminem's grandmother said in a recent interview with a British radio station.

This led to Eminem writing the song '97 Bonnie & Clyde in which he kills Kim and with Hailie's help, dumps her dead body into the lake. "I even went so far as to use Hailie for the vocal you hear on the record. It was my little baby's first musical appearance," Eminem says. The Slim Shady EP was released that year and quickly became an underground classic. Eminem thought he was about to be discovered when a guy who claimed to work at a record company promised to play his tape for an executive at the label. However, it turned out the guy was just a mailroom clerk and couldn't get Eminem's tape anywhere.

During that time, Eminem had also been evicted from the place he was staying. Him and his friend were living with somebody who offered them cheaper rent. Although they were paying their rent, their roommate wasn't paying the landlord so they were all kicked out. Fed up with everything, Eminem wrote the song "Rock Bottom" and that night he attempted suicide.

Soon after the release of his second album, Eminem and D-12 took a trip down to Florida to participate in the How Can I Be Down seminar. While there, Wendy Day, the founder of the rap coalition, invited Eminem to compete in the 1997 Rap Olympics. Figuring the $500 cash prize could help him out, Eminem jumped at the chance to go. "I went with the mind frame that I was not gonna lose," he recalls. "I needed that cash so bad. I had a job, but I was working part time so I could do my rap shit."

Despite his confidence, Eminem placed second after losing to an emcee named Juice. Ultimately it didn't matter because after his performance, an assistant to Jimmy Iovine (the CEO of Interscope Records) asked Eminem for a demo tape. Eminem gave him a copy of The Slim Shady EP without even knowing that this guy worked for a record company. "He came up to me afterwards and I didn't know he was anybody from anything," Eminem remembers. "He was like, 'Yo, you got a tape or anything?' I was all pissed, like, 'Yeah, here just take it,'" Eminem remembers."A bunch of other personal shit was happening in my life right about then, and I just thought I wasn't gonna get a deal no matter what, and I just took a fucking bunch of pills. I puked the shit up. I didn't have to go to hospital but my fucking stomach hurt so bad. I had a little problem and I just took too many. I don't know if I was necessarily trying to kill myself, I was just really depressed and I kept thinking, more pills, more pills, I just kept taking 'em. I bet I took 20 pills in the course of two hours," Eminem says of the ordeal. Little did he know that he would soon get the big break he'd been hoping for all of his life.

Jimmy Iovine liked what he heard and played the tape for legendary rap producer Dr. Dre. After hearing the demo, Dre became very interested in Eminem and he wasn't the only one. Back in Detroit, Web Entertainment was getting tons of orders for The Slim Shady EP. Eminem's underground buzz landed him an appearance on The Wake Up Show in Los Angeles. Dr. Dre heard the performance and called the radio station to question Eminem's whereabouts. Finally, Dre got in contact with the Eminem and signed him to his Interscope distributed Aftermath Records. Initially, Dre thought the young rapper was black. At their first face-to-face meeting, Em says, "he was kind of, like, blown back a little bit."

Regardless, the two recorded "My Name Is" within an hour of meeting and Dr. Dre was soon producing Eminem's major label debut. Things finally started looking up for Eminem. In 1998, Eminem released "Just Don't Give a Fuck" as a single and a few months later him and Kim got back together. The Slim Shady LP was released on February 23, 1999 and went triple platinum. "My Name Is" became a major hit and Eminem was officially a star. In addition to his success, Eminem's personal life reached a high point when he married Kim on June 14.