Eminem's Song 'Cleaning Out My Closet'

Keith Blackwell
Ms. Sullivan
ENG-1302
Eminem
Famous rapper Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem or Slim Shady) went through having hard times in his life with his mother, and wife, and overcoming his alcohol and drug abuse. I’m going to explain through a biographical lens how in these songs “cleaning out my closet” he talks about his mother, and in the songs “97 Bonnie and Clyde” and “Kim” where he talks about his wife, and in the song “Mockingbird,” where Eminem talks about his daughter Hailie and niece Alaina how he loves her.
In the song “Cleaning out my closet” it has a biographical lens that helps give the listener information, and lets them know about his background with his mother. In the song there are lyrics that say how he has “skeletons
He wrote “97 Bonnie and Clyde” first which talks about how he would want to kill her and then takes his daughter to the beach with Kim in the back of the trunk asleep the lyrics say “She’s taking a little nap in the trunk,” and that the smell Hailie is smelling is just a skunk he hit he sings “Oh, that smell? Dada must.ve runned over a skunk,” he wants it to just be him and his daughter and is tiered of all the things he goes through with his wife in the song he says “Just the two of us, just the two of us.” He talks about how there will be no more issues and no more fighting cause “There goes Mama”. In the prequel “Kim” he created an alternate reality from his personal life so he would have the freedom to kill Kim but make it look like it has her freaking out and killing her whole family and herself, but he would not get caught he did this because of how much she would aggravate him. “You and your husband have a fight One of your tries to grab a knife, and during the struggle he accidentally gets his Adam’s apple sliced (No!) and while this is going on his son just woke up and he walks in, she panics and he gets his throat cu (Oh my God!) so now they both dead, and you slash your own throat So now it’s double homicide and suicide with no note.” At this time in
He sings “looking puzzled, in a daze, I know it’s confusing you Daddy’s always on the move Momma’s always on the news” during this time in their life their mother Kim was on the run form the cops and not in Hailie and Alaina life. But Eminem in the song tells them to “Stiffen that upper lip up, little lady, I told ya Daddy’s here to hold ya through the night” which mean for them not to worry because he is going to be there to comfort her. At the end of the song he talks about how he would go the ends of the earth to make his kids happy “And if you ask me to, Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird I’mma give you the world….”
Eminem writes most of his songs about his life that is why it is easy to look at his songs through a biographical lens and be able to understand the things he went through in his life concerning his mother in the song “Cleaning out my Closet,” and his wife in the songs “97 Bonnie and Clyde” and “Kim,” and his kids in the song “mockingbird.” Through this type of lens or criticism one can understand Eminem a lot more as an artist and a