Debbie Nelson, Eminem's estranged mother, has died aged 69

Debbie Nelson, publicly known for her rocky relationship with rap star son Eminem, died Monday night in St. Joseph, Missouri. She was 69.

Nelson’s death was confirmed Tuesday by an Eminem spokesperson. She battled cancer for many years and eventually succumbed to lung cancer.

Debbie Nelson (then Debbie Mathers) is photographed in Macomb County Circuit Court in April 2001.

Eminem had not publicly commented on his mother’s death as of Tuesday afternoon. The rapper is scheduled to perform at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday.

Their fractured mother-son relationship was documented for years by Eminem in songs, including hits like “Cleanin’ Out my Closet.” The internal hostility was also expressed in both’s media interviews and became a hallmark of Eminem’s public profile in the early years of his career.

The two became estranged during the early stages of his success and Nelson even sued her son for defamation.

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In 2013, the rapper reflected on her breakup in the song “Headlights,” a reference to the images of her car driving away the last time they were together.

In this later song, he apologized to Nelson for “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” and pointed out that he no longer performed it live. “I cringe every time it comes on the radio,” he rapped. Nevertheless, “we remain alienated to this day.”

Nelson was born on a US Air Force base in Kansas in 1955 and later wrote about her own turbulent childhood. She said she had “few fond memories” of her childhood, including the time she lived with her grandmother in the Detroit suburb of Warren.

In 1970, at the age of 15 – then the legal marriage age in Missouri – she married her boyfriend Bruce Mathers. Less than two years later, on October 17, 1972, she gave birth to her first son, Marshall, in St. Joseph.

Nelson, who spent much of her adult life under the name Debbie Mathers, briefly lived in North Dakota with her young son before returning to Missouri. She tried to divorce her husband in 1974, citing physical abuse, but he fled to California, Nelson later wrote.

Eminem spent his childhood moving between homes in Missouri and the east side of metro Detroit before he and his mother permanently settled in Michigan in the 1980s. Nelson gave birth to his half-brother Nathan Kane in 1986.

After her son’s blockbuster breakthrough with “The Slim Shady LP” in 1999, Nelson filed a $10 million lawsuit against her son for defamation and infliction of emotional distress. Her filing cited 25 comments he made in various interviews in which he accused her of drug abuse and violent behavior during his upbringing.

Nelson’s mother, Betty Kresin, supported Eminem – her grandson – during the legal battle.

“The boy had a hellish childhood,” she told the Detroit Free Press in 1999. “I started to think Marshall’s name was come-here, you little son of a bitch.”

In 2000, Nelson told the Free Press, “You just have to stay positive when you have so many negative people in your life.”

Speaking to the Free Press when his debut album was released this year, Eminem acknowledged the shock value of the outlandish lyrical attacks that peppered the album.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you said that!’ But don’t judge me until you put yourself in my shoes,” he said. “My mother doesn’t like me talking about her taking drugs. Even though I say it jokingly, I think it touches her. And she knows it. She knows it. My mother knows.”

The lawsuit was settled out of court in 2000. In his 2002 hit “Without Me,” Eminem famously rapped, “I just settled all my lawsuits,” punctuated by a profane dig at his mother.

To the extent that the film “8 Mile” reflected the real-life story of Marshall Mathers, one could say that Nelson was the inspiration for “Mom’s Spaghetti,” the lyrical section from “Lose Yourself” that became an enduring pop culture meme became. (The phrase also became the name of Eminem’s restaurant in downtown Detroit, which now sells a retail version of his Mom’s Spaghetti sauce.)

Despite their estrangement, Nelson had hoped for a role in the 2002 film, which was filmed in Detroit – aiming to play the role of the trailer park mother, which ultimately went to Kim Basinger.

In 2008, Nelson published his memoirs entitled “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem” with the subtitle “Clarifying My Life as Eminem’s Mother.”

In it, she wrote about her difficulties breaking into Eminem’s tight-knit entourage of collaborators and bodyguards.

“I know in my heart that Marshall still loves me,” she wrote. “He’s just confused.”

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