Debbie Nelson, a single mom from Missouri whose tumultuous relationship together with her eldest son, the rapper Eminem, supplied fodder for a few of his early hits, died on Monday. She was 69.
The loss of life was confirmed by Dennis Dennehy, a longtime consultant for Eminem. He didn’t say the place she died or cite a trigger.
Ms. Nelson was recognized for her fraught relationship with Eminem, who by way of his expertise went from being a bullied little boy named Marshall Mathers to a vastly profitable rapper. He wrote about their struggles in a number of songs, together with one among his largest hits.
In his rage-fueled, freewheeling 2002 single “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” Eminem has a reckoning together with his mom over his upbringing, accusing her of neglect, abuse and prescription-pill abuse.
In the refrain, he sarcastically apologizes for making her cry, solely so as to add, “How dare you attempt to take what you didn’t assist me to get?”
Ms. Nelson, who sued her son for defamation in 1999 over one other unflattering illustration of her in his track “My Name Is,” shared her account of their relationship in a no-holds-barred memoir, “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem,” which was printed in 2008.
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