Marshall Bruce Mathers III known professionally as Eminem, is an American rapper. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in Middle America and is widely regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time. After the release of his debut album Infinite and the extended play Slim Shady Eminem signed with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and subsequently achieved mainstream popularity in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP. His next two releases, The Marshall Mathers and The Eminem Show (2002), were worldwide successes and were both nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. After the release of his next album, Encore Eminem went on hiatus in 2005, largely due to a prescription drug addiction. He returned to the music industry four years later with the release of Relapse (2009) and Recovery, which was released the following year. Recovery was the bestselling album worldwide of 2010, making it Eminem's second album, after The Eminem Show in 2002, to be the best-selling album of the year worldwide. In the following years, he released the US number one albums The Marshall Mathers 2 (2013), Revival (2017), Kamikaze (2018), and Music to Be Murdered By (2020). Eminem is among the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated worldwide sales of over 220 million records.