For the first time, one of music’s most popular—and headline-making—rap artists shares his private reflections, drawings, handwritten lyrics, and never-before-seen photographs.
Fiercely intelligent, relentlessly provocative, and prodigiously gifted, Eminem is known as much for his enigmatic persona as for being the fastest-selling rap artist and the first rapper to ever win an Oscar. Now, in The Way I Am, he shares his private thoughts on everything from his inner struggles, to the trials of being famous, to his love for his daughter, Hailie, creating a book that is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself.
Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of Eminem’s home and life along with original drawings, The Way I Am is filled with reflections on his greatest hits, previously unpublished lyric sheets, and other rare memorabilia. Providing his millions of fans with a personal tour of Eminem’s creative process, it is poised to be hailed in much the same way as Tupac’s The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, and Journals by Kurt Cobain.

Everyone wants to know what Eminem is really like—after the curtains go down. In The Way I Am, for the first time, the world's most controversial and enigmatic rapper speaks, candidly, about how he sees the world. About family and friends, dead and alive; about hip-hop and rap battles and his incisive rhymes; about the conflicts and challenges that have made him who he is today… And, in so doing, Eminem reveals new sides of a complicated, raw personality: confrontational, as always, but also direct, down-to-earth and sincere. Forget the hype. Forget the rumors. This is Slim Shady as real as he gets…the man named Marshall Bruce Mathers III.More than 200 full-color and black-and-white photographs—including never-before-published family snap shots and personal Polaroids—illustrate The Way I Am. This visual self-portrait spans the rapper's life and career, from his early childhood in Missouri to the basement home studio he records in today, from Detroit's famous Hip Hop Shop to sold-out arenas around the globe. Samples of graffiti-influenced flyers and art drawn by Eminem as a teenager show how hip-hop infuses his protean creativity to the core.“I get a line in my head and then BOOM,” Eminem says. Readers who have wondered at Em's intricate, eye-opening rhyme patterns can see, first-hand, the way his mind works in dozens of reproductions of his original lyric sheets, written in pen, on hotel stationary, on whatever scrap of paper was at hand. These lyric sheets, published for the first time here, show uncut genius at work. Taking readers deep inside his creative process, Eminem reckons with the way that chaos and controversy have fueled his music and helped to give birth to some of his most famous songs (including “Stan,” “Without Me,” and “Lose Yourself”).Also available only in this edition, an exclusive DVD includes footage from Em's personal camcorder, with his own real-time (and often hilarious) narration. Sure to become a collector's item, this special DVD includes previously unreleased documentary footage and original interviews, offering a fascinating look into Eminem's world, through his own eyes.The Way I Am is the personal journey of a man trained by life to hit back. Rapper, actor, producer, and father, Eminem's story is that of a man who learned to harness his anger in order to hone his talent, and shows how all the twists and turns in the road along the way have helped to create one of the true geniuses in popular music.