Bhavna Menon
Global Hip Hop 2014
Documentary Review – 8 Mile

The construction of authenticity and the performativity of race in 8 Mile
While it may not appear so upon first viewing, 8 Mile is a comprehensive platform to interpret the complex sociocultural fabric of hip-hop and rap music. It offers the viewer insight into the importance that rap assigns to the process of establishing authenticity while implicitly divulging the various dimensions of identity politics of race. We see that Jimmy B-Rabbit, despite being a white boy in an African-American dominated town is firmly grounded in several types of authenticity that facilitates his entry and success in the gangsta rap world.
The first and most obvious dimension of rap authenticity is the racial. Jimmy being white and trying to rap immediately generates questions of cultural property and appropriation. In a black-dominated rap venue called The Shelter, Jimmy begins his rap battle with Lil Tic. We see that white involvement in black art forms are immediately problematic when Lil tic raps “they [audience] don’t laugh cuz you’re whack, they laugh cuz you’re white with a mic”. Jimmy’s presence in the battle is scorned because he is white and rap is considered to belong to black people. Lil Tic calls him a “wigger that invented rhymes for money”; a “wigger” is slang for a white person who tries to emulate or acquire African-American cultural behavior and tastes. The suggestion that Jimmy “rhymes for money” is the ultimate assertion of phoniness because for black people, rap is a way of life, not money. This rejection however envisages rap as part of an oral heritage, one that preserves a cultural past and signifies the social code shared by the oral community. Rap and hip-hop are an articulation of black culture, clearly declared when Lil tic raps “cause this is hip-hop, you don’t belong, you’re a tourist”.