Superstar Eminem has had quite the transformation over the last several decades going from rapping in songs about his weaknesses with drugs to ones about faith.
Doing a deeper dive into the lyrics of songs by the 49-year-old rapper, we found numerous examples of messages about drugs, death, suicide, guns, violence, and more. His music contains messages about the struggle between right and wrong, as he mentions things like the satan and demons in such as his 1998 song “Demon Inside.”
In a recent interview, the rapper talked about his previous addiction with Vicodin and Valium and how he almost died in 2007 from an overdose, Yahoo.com reported in a piece published Thursday. He’s been sober now for 14 years.
There are also examples in his songs that he may always have been searching for help with these battles with lyrics that invoke such words as the “Bible,” “Jesus,” and the “devil” way before his latest remix of Kanye West’s “Use This Gospel.”
As far back as his 1996 album “Infinite,” Eminem, born Marshall Mathers,” rapped about God in one track titled,”It’s Ok.”
In it Mathers sings the lyrics, “But in the midst of this insanity / I’ve found my Christianity / through God and there’s a wish he granted me / he showed me how to cope with this stress and hope for the best / instead of moping depressed.”
In 2000, the Marshall Mathers LP dropped and Eminem became a huge celebrity, known for his shocking and NSFW lyrics, with hits like “The Real Slim Shady.”
The lyrics in his songs throughout his career also appear to tell the story about a man who knows all too well about the struggles in fame to steer clear from influences and stay on the righteous path. And those elements of faith have been interspersed in his music. Take a song like his massive hit in 2002, “Lose Yourself” from the soundtrack from his motion picture movie “8 Mile.”
In the song Mathers sings the lyrics, “The soul’s escaping, through this hole that is gaping/This world is mine for the taking/Make me king, as we move toward a new world order/A normal life is boring, but superstardom’s close to post mortem/It only grows harder, homie grows hotter/He blows, it’s all over/These hoes is all on him coast to coast shows, he’s known as the globetrotter/Lonely roads, God only knows.”
In his 2014 song “Fine Line”, he raps the lines, “And I don’t like how I see myself, so I open the Bible to Isaiah/’Cause I swear to Christ there are nights where I stay up at night/And say a prayer twice just to make sure God hears cause this ice layer/I skate on’s a nice way of putting it …”
In 2017, Eminem released his album titled “Revival” and it includes several songs that invoke words like holy water and God.
In one song on the album called, “Walk On Water,” he did with Beyonce, he sings, “God’s given me all this/Still I feel no different regardless/Kids look to me like as a God, this is retarded/If only they knew, it’s a facade and it’s exhaustive/And I try to not listen to nonsense/But if you b****es are trying to strip me of my confidence/Mission accomplished/I’m not God-sent.”
In 2019, Eminem is featured Fat Joe’s “Lord Above” as he rapped the lyrics, “You ain’t seen God ’til you starin’ down a barrel/I was gun shy, but now like a snail/The slug’s comin’ out of its shell.”
In January 2020, the superstar rapper released the surprise LP Music To Be Murdered By with a track called “Unaccommodating.” The lyrics to the song address is then-feud with rapper Machine Gun Kelly and invoke lines about the devil and God.
But Eminem’s 2022 remix of West’s 2019 “Use This Gospel” produced by Dr. Dre for DJ Khaled’s “God Did” album is probably the most revealing song he’s done yet that puts a message about his “faith” front and center.
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In the video that recently dropped on YouTube, fans hear Mathers rap about how he’s “holding on,” but doesn’t know how much “longer” he can take it since there are temptations from Satan everywhere he looks, as previously reported.
Eminem raps the lines, “Today’s the day that I put all of my trust and faith in You, Father/Please let this hate make me stronger/’Fore they turn on me like a zombie/It’s like ‘m being strangled unconscious (Yeah)/When temptation is almost like Satan is making you tryna/Take you away from your daughters.”
In one part he rapped, “Armed with Jesus, my weapon is prayer,” and near the end of his part on the song he raps, “Woke up on stage at a concert/Whole place looking like a mosh pit/Bible at my side like a rifle with a God-given gift/Every single day I thank God for/That’s why I pay so much homage/Praises to Jesus, I’ll always.”
Though there doesn’t appear to be a definitive answer as to whether or not the legendary rapper is a born again Christian, Eminem has definitely used religious references in his music since the start of his career and those messages seem to be getting louder each year.