Ed Sheeran cured his stutter by rapping along to Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP
Ed Sheeran has opened up about how it was none other than Eminem who cured his childhood stutter.
It's a little known fact that the 'Shape Of You' singer had a stutter in his younger years after undergoing surgery without anaesthesia which supposedly triggered his nervous system.
After going through all sorts of speech and language therapy, it was Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP that finally helped Sheeran kick the speech disorder.
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Speaking on The Howard Stern Show about the impact that the Rap God had left on him, Sheeran explained: "When I was 9, my uncle bought me The Marshall Mathers LP. He just said to my dad, 'This guy's the next Bob Dylan.'
"My dad didn't really clock it, he's just like, 'OK, Edward's gonna go and listen to that.
"And by learning that record, and by rapping it back to back to back to back, it cured my stutter. And I stopped talking like that."
Sheeran's fans will know, of course, that since then, he has actually met Eminem and collaborated with him on a number of songs, including his hit 'Remember The Name' and Eminem's 'Those Kinda Nights'.
Perhaps the ultimate full circle moment, though, was when Eminem asked Sheeran to perform his famous song 'Stan' with him at the his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last November.
"Years later, I've made songs with Eminem now and we've gotten to know each other pretty well," Sheeran told Howard Stern.
"And he asked me to play 'Stan' with him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I remember getting the call to do it... and I'm shooting 14 music videos back-to-back.
"It was on my day off from shooting the music videos and I was like, 'I can't say no'.
"So I got a plane straight after my music video, flew there, sung and then that night flew back. And it was really worth it."
Sheeran, who has just released his latest album Subtract added that meeting Slim Shady was an even bigger deal since the rapper is known for being 'quite reclusive'.
He said: "The first time that I met him I was super nervous - I got invited to his studio in Detroit - and I was sort of sitting there being like, 'Ooh, is he going to be stand-offish, is he a bit, like..?'
"But as soon as he walked in he just started talking about, like, Marvel comics and stuff like that and I was like, 'Ah, okay. We're good. We're cool.'"
Topics: Ed Sheeran, Eminem, Celebrity, Music
Ali Condon