After more than a decade in the game, Eminem endures as one of the most popular celebrities. The world's most successful rapper continues to break records in the modern era, recently reinventing himself after a drug overdose to hold his own against viral sensations like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

Controversy is one quality that Marshall Mathers III has never failed to deliver in spades. From his fledgling rhymes with New Jacks and D-12 through to Billboard chart-busting epics like 'My Name Is', 'The Way I Am' and 'Stan', his body of recorded work has been an exercise in lyrical genius, satirical wit and enjoyably gratuitous offensiveness. This book examines, for the first time, the entire oeuvre of the immensely gifted poet and street culture purveyor that is Eminem.

This is the definitive critical study of the man dubbed by Newsweek as the most compelling figure in all of pop music: it's a quest for the visceral, troubled raison d'etre of Eminem.