This week I decided to
tackle yet another genre of music. I've talked about orchestral music,
bluegrass, jazz, and some other genres, but never rap. This week I watched 8
Mile, starring Eminem as Jimmy 'B-Rabbit' Smith, a young rapper
struggling for clarity and stability in Detroit.
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| (src) |
I'm sure we all know who
Eminem is, but if you don't, he is the best-selling artist for the entire
decade from 2000-2010, a veritable 'rap god.' A big misconception about
this movie is that it’s a biopic of Eminem’s beginnings as a rapper. That would
be an easy assumption to make, seeing that Eminem is from Detroit and is a
rapper. However, the movie is fictional and Eminem never claimed that the
character B-Rabbit was supposed to be a representation of him.
The movie itself isn’t
awe-inspiring, ground-breaking cinema in any sense. It’s your typical underdog
story with a feel-good ending where the underdog finally overcomes stacked odds
to reach his goal. B-Rabbit faces poverty, the shame of living with his mother,
the heavy weight of her screwed-up life, job instability, and an incredible
amount of discrimination as a white rapper trying to cut it in a genre that’s
almost all black.
I’d say that B-Rabbit’s
biggest problem throughout the movie is that he likes to fight. A lot. He
spends a lot of the movie just confronting people with his fists and getting
beat up rather than working on his rap game or coming up with new rhymes. I
guess he doesn’t have to work that hard because he’s extremely talented, but
still.
Time to talk about the
music. Eminem actually wrote “Lose Yourself” for this film and it won him an
Oscar. The music throughout the movie is consistent and cohesive. The movie
takes place in 1995, when Biggie and 2pac and Wu-Tang were all really big, so a
lot of the music throughout the film is just that stuff playing over the car
radio as B-Rabbit and his squad drive around 8 mile. Only three songs
throughout the film are played in the forefront, and all serve the movie most
through their lyrics.
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| Rabbit raps his way to the top in the final rap battle scene. (src) |
The first is "Shook
Ones Pt. II" by Mobb Deep, which plays at the very beginning when Rabbit
is trying to get hyped up for the first rap battle. The lyrics showcase his
insecurity. The other two songs are Eminem written, produced, and performed,
and they fit in perfectly with the setting of the movie and the plot. “8 Mile”
plays as he sits on the bus driving through 8 mile and composing, and the songs
stunted lyricism conveys the decrepit state of the area. Of course, “Lose
Yourself” plays throughout the movie when Rabbit gets hype about rapping, and
the full extent of the song plays over the final credits.
Overall, the movie is
really cohesive when it comes to blending music, setting, and plot. Eminem acts
really well, conveying the lovable down-on-his-luck guy with aplomb. I would
definitely recommend watching this movie on the basis of the music alone.
