8 Mile OST
i first heard the 8 mile soundtrack when i was 12 years old. this was back when i was just becoming aware of music, a time i think of as the Great Awakening. my parents would not buy or be party to any purchase of music that they considered “rude”. as a result, my cousin and i developed a sort of rum-running situation where he would buy the albums for me, concealing the parental advisory label by reversing the album covers. i can’t remember exactly what it was like for me to listen to these albums back then, except that devious feeling of having the eminem show playing in my walkman with my parents no more than 10 feet away. listening to the album again for the first time in years, i understand it on an entirely different level. maybe because this time around i feel like i can relate to where eminem is coming from.
please don’t let me be bitchin holdin no regular job
it’s definitely a fear of mine that i should end up just anybody. a recent episode of community dealt with the idea of people who are “special”, and concluded that this was not actually the case. logically, i accept this. there is nothing that i am capable of that any other person might not be as well. but i want to be a part of something, to contribute something that is recognizably mine. the scenario where i’m just regular, ordinary, data – my mind rejects it.
you can do anything you put your mind to, man
the message of 8 mile isn’t a particularly radical one – it’s basically a bedtime story. ‘lose yourself’ is distilled in its final line, an almost afterthought that seems to barely make it in before the fade. by the time ‘lose yourself’ won an oscar it had become a sort of cliché in itself (endless jokes about “mom’s spaghetti”). it’s been long enough now that i can separate the song from the noise, and for some reason this line in particular struck me. maybe i’m just a sucker.
you don’t see me in the hood, it’s cuz i’m doin this, man
a line that probably seemed like a throwaway when i first heard them, a bunch of words that sounded cool when obie trice said them. it’s relevant to me now at a time when i’m convinced the most important thing is that i am interested in what i do, and that i invest myself in it.
thinking about this has made me realize the importance of circumstance. one album taken in two distinct periods of my life can have meanings entirely independent of each other. in this new context, 8 mile was a letter to eminem’s younger self when he was most desperate, and i don’t think i’ve ever found him more utterly convincing.
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