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Popular Culture Review
in and of itself, could make an interesting study of postmodern identity, but the
more explicit metanarrativity of the song “Lose Yourself’ presents a much more
compelling model of the postmodern self presented through Eminem’s artistry.
The rap itself begins by describing Jimmy Smith as he prepares to compete in a
rap battle and then his failure as he chokes on stage. This description is an almost
perfect description of the opening scene of 8 Mile, becoming a kind of pure
simulation of the film itself:
His palms are sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already [and] mom’s spaghetti
He’s nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting what he wrote down
The whole crowd goes so loud, he opens his mouth
But the words won’t come out
He’s chokin’. How? Everybody’s jokin’ now.
The clocks run out, times up, over.
This literality of the description of the character in the film who vomits on his
sweater before the competition begins is disrupted by the next line: “Snap back to
reality. Oh, there goes gravity.” Jimmy has snapped out of his muddled haze as
he does in the film, but, at the same time, reality has been unsettled as rules like
gravity are unsettled and Eminem oddly describes the departure of this character,
“there goes Rabbit, he choked,” but it is also a demarcation in the song that this
character will shortly exit the narrative. We are brought back to reality as
Eminem describes not the fictional world of Jimmy Smith, but the medium n
which the character Jimmy Smith exists and the sort of role that this song should
play for this character: “This whole rhapsody better capture this moment / And
hope it don’t pass him.” Eminem acknowledges here that the first verse, this
“rhapsody” exists to capture this moment from the film and that the song needs to
maintain its focus on the “hero” of that film. Yet, at this point, he breaks into the
chorus, which ironically follows the notion that Rabbit has exited the stage, has
been lost from the narrative as he sings: “You better lose yourself in the music.”
When the next verse begins, it is as if Rabbit has been lost in the music,
“His soul’s escaping through this hole that is gaping.” Eminem continues to
describe Rabbit in third person terms but, again, in terms that highlight his
disappearance. He follows with a line that should seemingly belong to Jimmy but
is expressed in the first person and ultimately does not sound like the words of a
defeated, young rapper: “This world is mine for the F