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Eminem and other celebs who have cut ties with family members
The rapper never met his late father
© Reuters
Eminem’s biological father, Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr., recently died of a heart attack at age 67, TMZ reports. Though news of his death is inevitably tied to the rapper, the two had a nonexistent, if not toxic, relationship.
Most people first came to know Bruce Mathers through his son’s frequent lyrics about how he abandoned him and his mother. Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III, has made a large part of his career through rapping about his very real struggles, and that includes channeling his lifelong grudge against his father into his music.
His hit songs like ‘My Name Is’ and ‘Cleanin' Out My Closet’ reflect those feelings, the former of which includes the lyrics, “And by the way when you see my dad? Tell him that I slit his throat, in this dream I had.”
Eminem’s mother was 17, and Bruce was 24, when they had their son, and Bruce reportedly left them shortly after. While the rapper and his mother settled in Detroit, Bruce moved to California and had two other children.
There are contesting accounts of whether or not Bruce tried to get back into contact with his son. In interviews, Eminem has said that he wrote letters to him as a child but they always came back “return to sender,” and that Bruce would occasionally call, but he never actually spoke to him on the phone.
One year after Eminem’s successful album ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ dropped, Bruce also published a letter addressed to his son in a newspaper claiming that his mother had kept him away.
Despite his claims, Eminem apparently chose to remain estranged from his father, a decision which was also influenced by becoming a father himself.
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