Between the contentious lyrics, the many public beefs, the random Oscars appearance and, it bears mentioning again, all the edgy lyrics, it’s hard to think of Eminem as just a regular guy.
Mainly, because he’s not, of course, with the 15 Grammys and enough what was that moves to fill entire listicles. But during his appearance last month on Mike Tyson‘s podcast Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, he sounded just like any boasting father of an adult child.
No grandbabies, yet, he reported of daughter Hailie Jade Scott, “just a boyfriend,” plus a bachelor’s degree (complete with a 3.9 GPA) from Michigan State University. “She’s doing good,” he shared. “She’s made me proud for sure.”
Because, newsflash to anyone who slept through the past two decades, she’s grown up a bit since her baby coos could be heard on 1999’s ’97 Bonnie & Clyde. You know, the one her controversy-courting dad wrote about murdering her mom.
“Hailie, baby, I didn’t mean to make you eighty percent of what I rapped about,” the musician acknowledged years later on his 2017 Revival track “In Your Head.” “Maybe, I shoulda did a better job at separating / Shady and entertaining from real life.”
Nonetheless, he and ex-wife Kim Mathers did a pretty okay job at raising their little girl. Now a 24-year-old with a psychology degree and an Instagram following your average Bachelor contestant would kill for, the Detroiter is as public as her dad is private. While his performance at February’s Oscars (a makeup for the one he missed in 2002 when 8 Mile‘s “Lose Yourself” won Best Original Song) was surprising mostly because people had no idea what he was up to, his offspring is very online as a successful influencer, her two million devotees living for her OOTO posts and workout inspo.
Yet, for a celebrity kid, she remains pretty grounded, her feed littered with positive affirmations, puns and some gentle ribbing at her own expense that suggests a healthy dose of humility. It was a goal her dad strived for as he spent her adolescence creating headlines, and he’s pretty stoked about how it all turned out.
Mentioning his 26-year-old niece Alaina Marie Mathers and 17-year-old Whitney Scott Mathers, Kim’s daughter with a former partner, he told Tyson, “When I think about my accomplishments like that’s probably the thing that I’m the most proud of, you know, is that—is being able to raise kids.”
For much of her childhood, Hailie was heard (about) and not seen, her dad making reference to her in hits like “Mockingbird” and “Hailie’s Song” and in interviews telling Rolling Stone in 2010 that, to him, fatherhood was about “just being there. Not missing things. If there’s anything important going on, regardless of what it is, I’m there.”
Such was the case in 2013 when the senior was crowned homecoming queen at Chippewa Valley High School in Clinton Township, Mich., her dad, who’s spoken about not finishing ninth grade, watching from inside the school as to not pull focus. “Hailie came out with her mother Kim [Scott] when she was introduced with all the other kids but her father watched from inside the school because he didn’t want to cause a scene—he wanted Hailie to have her own moment,” a parent told local newspaper the Macomb Daily.
At the public high school, 25 miles north of Detroit, she played volleyball and was a member of the National Honor Society, the Art Club, the Key Club and Student Council. All the while, she studied enough to graduate Summa Cum Laude in 2014 (giving thanks to the parents who “have pushed me to be the person I am and have given me all the support to achieve what I have,”) and get accepted into Michigan State, the same spot her old man made a surprise appearance during a 2002 advanced screening of 8 Mile.
It was there, between rushing Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, “spontaneous weekend” trips to Chicago and date nights with boyfriend Evan McClintock—an economics major that enjoys golf and has Dad’s approval—that she truly transformed from just a name in her dad’s raps.
First signing on to Instagramin October 2016, she quickly built up a following of 200,000 with her snaps of glamour shots, Lollapalooza adventures and witty captions. (“sorry TLC but i’ve been chasing waterfalls,” she wrote last March.) By early 2019, her fan base had ballooned to more than a million.
She wasn’t sure yet what she wanted to do career-wise, she admitted when asked by Daily Mail shortly after graduating in 2018. “It’s kind of up in the air.”
As it turned out, she was pretty much already doing it. Though she joked in a May 2019 post “just waiting for the day ‘caption writer’ becomes a job,” it, uh, kinda already is, influencers commanding quite a bit of cash for sponsored content and other partnerships. And she’s certainly doing well enough to enjoy trips to Punta Cana, Australia and Hawaii and well-planned birthday celebrations, like the disco-themed photo shoot she set up to mark turning 24 this past Christmas.
And while selecting outfits that will send her followers rushing to buy whatever she’s selling and training sessions filled with chest presses, planks and triceps dips certainly take up a good portion of her days, family remains the priority. The four-bedroom house in Detroit that she shares with Shiba Inu pup Lottie is just minutes away from where mom Kim lives.
“She enjoys keeping a low profile, walking her dog and going to fitness classes, hanging out with her friends and holidaying with Evan,” a source told the Daily Mail in 2018. As for Dad, he remains ever-supportive, Hailie told the paper, “We are very close.”
So despite everything that’s happened in between, the relapses and public fights with her mom that caused him to apologize on 2017’s Revival (“You ain’t asked for none of this s–t, now you’re being punished?”), the rapper has accomplished just what he’d hoped for.
“She has been my main source of drive and motivation, especially when she was first born,” he said back in 2002, three years after releasing his splashy second disc, The Slim Shady LP. “I didn’t have a career yet, I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a place to live. I think that kicked me in the ass harder knowing, ‘How am I going to raise her?’ She’s always been the driving force for me to stay busy, stay focused, always been my number one reason for fear of failure. I can’t fail. I can’t have her grow up and not be able to say, ‘My dad succeeded’.”
Now he can say the same about her.
