Eminem seems untroubled by issues of race. His best friends were (and are) black, and he swaggers easily in a black-dominated music genre. Racism is one of the few things he seems to take seriously. "That word [nigger] is not even in my vocabulary," he says in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. "I don't think you can put race alongside gender, or a man preferring a man."

He is less enlightened about the women he believes have done him wrong, however. (And notoriously even less so about gays.) He levels his most strident attacks at his women in general -- and his mother and wife in particular. Whether it is because he is a spoiled brat scarred by being pushed out of the nest (as his mother and uncle contend) or the long-suffering son of an erratic shrew and manipulative wife, as he says, there's little love lost between Eminem and his mother these days.

Here's a sample of Eminem's feelings, from the track "Marshall Mathers" on the new "Marshall Mathers LP":

My fuckin' bitch mom suing for 10 million
She must want a dollar for every pill I been stealin'
Shit, where the fuck you think I picked up the habit
All I had to do was go in her room and lift up a mattress

Here's a lyric from "My Name Is" from "The Slim Shady LP":

Ninety-nine percent of my life I was lied to
I just found out my mom does more dope than I do (Damn!)
I told her I'd grow up to be a famous rapper
Make a record about doin' drugs and name it after her (Oh thank you!)

Hurt and angered by her son's allegations of abuse and drug addiction, Mathers-Briggs did indeed file a $10 million defamation suit against Eminem.

"People told me I'd be sorry someday," she says of the way she indulged her son, but she insists she isn't sorry. "Marshall is all for show, it's more put-on," Mathers-Briggs says of his attacks. "That's what everybody wants to hear."

Nelson, her brother, agrees. "His mother was real good to the boy," he said, adding that he never knew of any drug or alcohol abuse while Eminem was growing up.

But two of Mathers-Briggs' former boyfriends say otherwise. "She is lying about the drugs and stuff," says Fred Samra Jr., Nathan's estranged father, whom Mathers-Briggs successfully sued for child support. "I won't say any more." Of Eminem, he said, "You would not believe the shit he has been through." Again, he declined to elaborate.

Don DeMarc, who says he dated and lived with Eminem's mother sporadically in the late '70s and early '80s, says Mathers-Briggs endured nagging pain, perhaps stemming from being hit by a car with a drunken driver. "She complained of headaches, backaches and toothaches," he says. "She always seems to be in pain. She's always looking for pain pills."

Mathers-Briggs denies allegations of drug abuse. Although she is a smoker, Eminem's mother said she raised her boy in a smoke-, drug- and alcohol-free environment. She says she is a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Eminem's travails with Scott, now his wife, are well known, too. On his new album, on the frenzied track "Kim," Eminem dispatches his wife in a bloody rage:

Don't you get it bitch, no one can hear you?
Now shut the fuck up and get what's comin to you
You were supposed to love me
[Choking sounds]
Now bleed! Bitch, bleed!
Bleed! Bitch, bleed! Bleed!

Former co-workers remember Eminem agonizing over his battles with Scott. "He would come in to work and worry and say, 'The bitch took my daughter and won't let me see her. I don't know what I'm going to do, I don't know what I'm going to do,'" said Mazur.

Fields said he remembers Scott picking a fight with Eminem minutes before he took the stage at a party celebrating the release of "The Slim Shady EP," the 10-track precursor to his breakthrough first major-label album. It was not a good time for a donnybrook, but Scott could not wait, Fields says.

Moments like that have not endeared Scott to Eminem's family. "She does not care about my son at all," says Mathers-Briggs. "She cares about the money." One of the less slanderous accusations Mathers-Briggs and Nelson hurl at Scott is that she has been arrested three times for drunken driving. (The Michigan Secretary of State's Office confirms two drunken driving arrests.)

Eminem's family also accuses his wife of feathering her own nest with proceeds from the rapper's phenomenal success, at their expense. Eminem and Scott own a spacious home in Sterling Heights; Kim's stepfather's name appears with Eminem's on the registration of a Ford Explorer, suggesting that it was a gift.

For their part, Eminem's mother says he reneged on an agreement to make payments on her Casco mobile home, which has since been repossessed. His uncle lives in the house his family has owned for 50 years and drives a 1987 Toyota pick-up truck pushing 200,000 miles. He insists that Eminem's family does not want money, only to free him from the grip of a gold digger and her manipulative family.

"A daughter is a daughter for life," Nelson says. "A son is a son till he takes a wife."

Kim Mathers did not respond to calls or letters seeking an interview.

After Eminem was arrested June 4 outside the nightclub where she says she gave an acquaintance a peck on the cheek, Scott denied cheating on her husband. "I don't think anybody in their right mind would cheat on a millionaire husband -- especially with a nobody at a neighborhood bar," she says. In a letter to the Detroit Free Press, she wrote: "Just because my husband is an entertainer, that does not mean that our personal business is for everyone's entertainment purposes."

"I have always taken his word on things and stood by his side."

Referring to Eminem and Kim's relationship, Fields observed: "Pain, mystery and drama -- that's what motivates an artist, as much as love and affection."

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