Eminem’s mother, Debbie Nelson, with whom the rapper had a complicated, often contentious relationship, has died. She was 69. Dennis Dennehy, Eminem’s longtime representative, confirmed Nelson’s death to Rolling Stone. A cause of death was not immediately available.
Nelson gave birth to Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers), her eldest son, on Oct. 17, 1972, when she was 18. In a 1999 Rolling Stone profile on Eminem, Nelson said that she married Eminem’s father, Bruce Mathers, when she was 15, and he was 22, and that the couple spent several years playing in a band together called the Daddy Warbucks.
Not long after Eminem was born, Bruce left the family, and Nelson raised the rapper and his half-brother, Nathan, largely on her own. They shuttled around Michigan and Missouri for years before finally settling in Detroit.
While Nelson maintained that she provided financial and emotional support for her son, Eminem said in that 1999 story that they fought constantly. He accused her of stealing his paychecks, frequently kicking him out of the house, and popping pills and taking other drugs, which triggered mood swings. (Nelson denied ever doing drugs.)
As Eminem turned to music, Nelson became a frequent target and antagonist. On “My Name Is,” Em’s line, “I just found out my mom does more dope than I do,” prompted Nelson to file a $10 million defamation suit against her son. While Nelson won the suit, she reportedly only received $25,000, most of which went to pay legal fees.
Despite the legal battle, Eminem continued to write scathing bars about Nelson on songs like “Kill You” and and “Cleanin’ Out My Closet.” Nelson, in turn, actually lobbed a diss track of her own at her son. In the early 2000s, a hip-hop group called ID-X asked Nelson (then going by Debbie Mathers-Briggs) if she wanted to put out a CD of her own, and she agreed. One of the resulting two tracks, “Dear Marshall,” found Nelson reciting an open letter to her son, where she alternately chastises her son and admits some mistakes of her own.
Then, in 2008, Nelson published a tell-all book, My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem. In an interview with MTV News at the time, Nelson said of her son, “He never knew his father, and I did all I could to make up for it. I wasn’t happy when he made up a whole new life for himself — what mother wants to be known as a pill-popping alcoholic who lives on welfare? To tell the truth, I was heartbroken. The lies started coming thick and fast — and not just from Marshall… I think he’s forgotten the good times we had, and this book is my way of setting the record straight.”
This story is developing…
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