When you hear the name Bruce Mathers, you, as an employee of VSHN, of course know that we’re talking about our Chairman of the Board. There is, however, a second person sharing the name who is almost as famous.

During his childhood Marshall Bruce Mathers’s family rarely stayed in one place for more than a year and his early life was marked by poverty, violent beatings, and an absent father who rejected his regular letters marking them with “return to sender”. Although he was interested in storytelling and the English language, he never made his peace with the school-system and dropped out at the age of seventeen. However, he was able to express his talent in the form of Rap, going by the name of M&M, which developed into MC Double M and finally Eminem.

Mathers invented yet another character, “Slim Shady”, a brutal and vicious alter ego that allowed him to express his anger with the state of the world and his life. He recorded an EP with the same name that in the aftermath of the 1998 Rap Olympics found its way to Dr. Dre, who upon hearing it requested to meet Eminem immediately. Despite criticism of Dr. Dre for hiring a white rapper and the artist’s fear of being starstruck by the famous producer, the collaboration proved to be very fruitful, with the introduction of Slim Shady – My Name Is – to a wider audience leading to world-wide success.

Unfortunately by today the videos on all official sites – including the one below – have been replaced by a variant with more advertiser friendly lyrics, but with a bit of searching you can still find the original version.

Come next Monday Eminem will celebrate half a century on this planet.

The song features samples from the song I Got To… by British singer Labi Siffre and similar to Coolio’s case, Eminem was required to change some lyrics before being allowed to use the track, as Siffre, being a gay activist, was not okay with the line “My English teacher wanted to have sex in junior high. The only problem was, my English teacher was a guy.”