Eminem

Eminem is without-a-doubt the most famous and successful rapper in history. He's produced over 300 songs over the past 20-something years of his rap career. From Infinite, the first album he released, to Shady XV, he has continued to grow and mature, and bring more and more to the music industry. The origin of his success derives from his raw passion and determination to succeed - even against the odds that faced him – along with support from music artist friends such as Dr. Dre, Proof, Royce da 5' 9'', Notorious B.I.G, Xzibit and so on. It is known scarcely that Eminem's genius comes from his adamance to listen to every famous rapper he could at a young age to fully understand the art of rapping, and influence his subject matters.

The 42-year-old superstar grew up in Detroit and befriended Proof at the age of 15. After Proof was shot in 2006, Eminem found it immensely hard to deal with, but eventually managed to cope once he kicked his valium addiction and composing songs 'You're Never Over' and 'Difficult', both tributes to Proof. A lot of people say that his best work was before Relapse was released in 2009, but personally I feel his music hasn't decreased much in quality to this day, and all of his work up right up until the Marshall Mathers LP 2 has been out-of-this-world.

Eminem has collaborated with hundreds of other rappers, singers and songwriters, ranging from Elton John and Adam Levine to Dido, P!nk, and Lil Wayne. In my opinion, his more 'poppy' material, like 'Monster' featuring Rihanna and Akon's track 'Smack That' which Eminem featured in, isn't quite as affective at presenting the raw emotion and meaning behind his message as some of his music, such as 'No Apologies' or 'Spend Some Time', and as a young, amateur rapper, these styles of his music have been a huge influence on my own work. I write songs about serious matters such as depression and governmental corruptions, not the kind of rap which degrades women and promote illegal substances (I know Eminem has been known to write lyrics about both of those topics but he is overwhelmingly poetical and careful how he words them there is reason to ignore it).

As far as I know the 'rap God' was the first hip hop artist ever to use multisyllabic rhymes in every song he wrote, and as a rapper I know how difficult it can be to write a rhyme that's a little bit more complex than 'cat', 'bat', 'rat', 'that'. As much criticism as Eminem gets, namely about how he's going downhill, he will always be the best rapper of all time in any true hip hop fans eyes.