Eminem and Debbie Mathers showed that hip-hop is the genre where men come to terms with their mothers | Eminem

hip-hop has long been a culture that honors single mothers and their many sacrifices. “She barely grew up and she became my mother!” a tearful Cee-Lo Green raps over a damaged piano on Goodie Mob’s criminally underrated 1995 song. Guess who. “I never knew my father, so even when times got bad / I was glad because I had my mother.”

On the powerful hood-gospel song, Dear mom2Pac famously paid tribute to the tenacity of his own family matriarch, Black Panther political revolutionary Afeni Shakur. He delivered the empathetic line, “Even as a crack monk, mama / You always been a black queen.” It is one of the few rap songs selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry at the US Library of Congress.

Whether it’s Kanye West gently comparing the late Donda West to an elegant book of poetry written by Nico Giovanni or Jay-Z revealing he “wept with joy” when his own single mother, Gloria Carter, finally came out as a lesbian after years of public shaming, you don’t have to look far to find a rap song that elevates a mother to deity status.

That’s what makes Eminem’s many lyrical attacks on his mother, Debbie Nelson, who died this week at age 69, stand out so dramatically. Turning her rough childhood in a Detroit trailer park into an animated soap opera where nothing is off limits, Eminem’s songs often portray Debbie as a villainous, Sister Ratched-esque character, while her alleged drug use is something he considered ripe for parody.

“I just found out my mom does more drugs than me!” Slim Shady famously rapped on 1999’s breakthrough single My Name Is. The attacks seemed to grow darker as time went on, with rape jokes (in the song kill you) and the suggestion that Debbie may have Munchausen syndrome by proxy. He ended the poignant Cleanin’ Out My Closet, which reached No. 4 in the UK charts, with the brutal address to her: ‘Well guess what? I am dead: as dead to you as possible!’

Some see Eminem’s attacks as a byproduct of a more extreme, Jerry Springer-fueled era in pop culture, where boundaries were pushed with reckless abandon by everything from Vince McMahon’s dirtier Attitude-Era wrestling shows to ” the boys for boys” sold in the supermarket. But many others – including Debbie herself, who is suing Eminem for defamation – think the line has been crossed.

Growing up fatherless myself due to bereavement and with a working-class mother who subsequently worked seven jobs to support her three boys, I gravitated towards rap music and its outsider themes. It was that rare place where single mothers were consistently deified, rather than written off with negative judgments, as was usually the case in classic British political discourse. There’s been a rich tradition of rappers paying homage to the women who were the glue that held a struggling household together, and that’s what made Eminem’s mother-shaming lyrics so shocking.

Given the bad blood, it was hard to see how Eminem and his mother could ever reconcile. But then came Eminem’s softer 2013 rap ballad. Headlights. Here he expressed regret for I’m cleaning out my closet once came out and changed her stance, belting out the poignant line, “You’re still beautiful to me because you’re my mother.”

In the music video, he gives Debbie a warm hug, and it felt like a pivotal moment for Eminem’s legacy: moving from venomous rapping about his broken childhood to solidarity. In this song, even if the production is a bit sludgy, Eminem admitted that he and his mother were “survivors” and not enemies.

The rollercoaster saga of Eminem and Debbie is an example of how hip-hop is perhaps surprisingly rich in empathetic songs about struggling mothers. Even when artists reveal hard truths—like Biggie sharing his mother’s cancer diagnosis with the world Suicidal thoughtsor the underground hero Baldy James, who complains about being neglected by the woman of the house Mom dearest – tends to culminate in a moment that reveals a poignant tribute or restoration of a broken relationship.

It’s the genre in which working-class men begin to wrestle with complex relationships with the women who gave birth to them—like Debbie and Marshall Mathers. While the road may be rough and painful memories likely to be dredged up, rappers (and generally their fans who feel “seen” by the lyrics) who immortalize their mothers in music tend to walk away much lighter shoulders.