27 Fascinating Facts You Didn't Already Know About Eminem

Eminem told Rolling Stone in 2011 that Elton John, who had struggled himself in the past with substance abuse, helped the rapper out when when he was getting sober: 

I speak to Elton [John]. He's like my sponsor. He usually calls me once a week to check on me, just to make sure I'm on the up-and-up. He was actually one of the first people I called when I wanted to get clean. He was hipping me to things, like, 'You're going to see nature that you never noticed before.' Sh*t you'd normally think was corny but that you haven't seen in so long that you just go, 'Wow! Look at that f*cking rainbow!' Or even little things - trees, the color of leaves. I f*cking love leaves now, man. I feel like I've been neglecting leaves for a long time.

Eminem experienced what every musician dreams of... happenstance discovery. He was at the Rap Olympics in Los Angeles and was noticed by someone in the mail room at Interscope, who then managed to get his mixtape to Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. The two loved it (and mixtapes rarely ever turn into much).  

What's even crazier is that the night before, he had to break into his own place, from which he'd just been evicted. "I had to break in," he said. “I didn't have anywhere else to go. There was no heat, no water, no electricity. I slept on the floor, woke up, went to LA. I was so pissed.”

Eminem befriended Jonah Hill on the set of Funny People and told the actor that Hill's 2007 movie Superbad was his favorite film. Hill told MTV:

 Eminem says his favorite movie is Superbad, ever of all time. And he said to me, I’m not kidding - this is not like me being, “I’m cool” - he said if there was an award for best movie ever, he thinks Superbad should win. He quotes all the scenes to me.

“Lose Yourself” is not just considered one of Eminem's best songs... it's considered one of the best rap songs in history. Apparently, he cranked it out in one take, cutting the song during a brief break from filming. “He came in and laid down all three verses in one take,” engineer Steven King told Rolling Stone. “Jaws dropped - we were like, 'Oh, my God!' This story had been building up in him.”

After looking at the songs of 93 top artists in over 25 genres of music, a 2015 study found that Eminem had the widest vocabulary. Coming in hot at a whopping 8,818 unique words used, Eminem topped Jay Z (6,899 unique words), Tupac (6,569 unique words), Kanye (5,069 unique words), and Bob Dylan (4,883 unique words). The study also looked for lyrical density and new word interval.

Eminem told Spin magazine in 2010 that not only did he not know how to work a computer, but refused to learn:

If I learn how to work a computer, I'm going to be on that b*tch all day looking at comments about me, and it's going to drive me crazy.