Eminem: Lose Yourself, Lost Us
Remember when yappy-voiced rapper Eminem yelled at us to “lose yourself” in isn’t-life-tough-in-trailer-trash-rappy-land film 8 Mile?
Sorry if you were inspired at the time to put on some baggy trousers, spit some phat lyrics and mug a pensioner, because it turns out Eminem wasn’t just talking about losing yourself in the magic of urban music.
Four years after the film in question, Eminem is back and has revealed that he was in the grip of drug and alcohol addiction at the time. Lose yourself indeed, Nemmy! Perhaps you lost yourself after a night out on vodka and disco biscuits, forced to sell one of your blingin’ necklaces to a cab driver in exchange for a wide-eyed lift home? Or maybe you lost yourself in a bucket ‘o crack at a squat party. Either way, Eminem, this is all most disappointing.
You always seemed to focused, so individual and, most important of all, happy to fly in the face of celebrity and its conventions. A trip to la-la-drug land followed by a spell in rehab and then a magnificent, clean-living resurgence conveniently timed to coincide with the release of a new single/film/appearance in Celebrity Big Arse? That’s just too predictable, Marshall.
The pressures of being a staccato-voiced young rapper with millions in the bank and the world at your feet must be quite sizeable. That must be your excuse for your nosedive into whisky, wine and weed. After all, every other famous addict tells us the same thing. Why can’t anybody get successful without getting hooked – and more to the point, using their recovery as the reason why we should be interested in their latest career development?
Eminem is talented enough for us to listen to his rappity stylings without us having to listen to his ramblings on addiction. Unfortunately, his talent for lyrics is not echoed in a talent for not sounding like a twat in interviews about his drugs hell. Witness this comment from a recent BBC interview: “I was like Bugs Bunny in rehab, Bugs Bunny walking in the room.”
Yes, dear. We’ve all thought that we were someone else once under the influence. There was this one time at uni when I ate too many space cakes and meowed like a cat for an hour. But I don’t tell anybody about it now because I don’t think it would help my career. So why should it help yours?
This was a guest blog by comedienne and all-around good egg Louise Scodie. Discover more about her inherent greatness here.
And Eminem is reborn, free of the addictions that plagued his early career and caused his abrupt hiatus from music back in 2005. So does this mean he will finally release an album that doesn’t sound like every other album he’s ever written? Like fuck it does.
Tom J, your a fag
Louise Scodie? never heard of you, and this blog that you’ve written, shows me why. Comedian? nah your pretty lame, you must be pretty broke because theres no way you could make money trying to make people laugh, your just another person writing shit about eminem so someone reads your blog. You know thats the only reason I was brought to this website.
Yours truely Ronnie Collyer, Cairns, Smithfield, Australia.