8 Miles of Really Good Rap

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.

(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.

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.

FULL SOUNDTRACK