The Slim Shady and his manager have injected multi-million dollar in NFT marketplace, several months after the rapper released his first digital art collection.

• Aug 8, 2021

AceShowbiz - Rap star Eminem has invested in NFT (non-fungible token) start-up company MakersPlace.

Earlier this year (21), the "Without Me" rapper ventured into the NFT market for the first time, making $1.78million (£1.3million) from his first Shady Con collection, which included digital action figures based on characters in some of his best-known music videos.

Now Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers, and his manager, Paul Rosenberg, have helped the company, which is based in San Francisco, California, raise $30 million (£21.6 million) in funding.

MakersPlace was co-founded in 2018 by now-chief executive officer Dannie Chu, who told Variety ten times more collectors are using the platform in 2021 versus 2020 figures, and he and his staffmembers have earned more than $100million (£72 million) in transactions to date.

"We see this fundraise as continued validation for our mission (sic)," said Chu. "We will continue to push boundaries and empower digital creators with better tools and services, while finding more ways to introduce digital art and NFTs to a mainstream collector audience."

Meanwhile, Eminem said when releasing his first NFT collection, "I've been collecting since I was a kid, everything from comic books to baseball cards to toys, as well as every rap album on cassette I could get my hands on. Not much has changed for me as an adult…"

"It's been a lot of fun coming up with ideas from my own collecting passion."