8 Mile and Daniel Beady, Race and Realness

I was really inspired by the topic of realness and MC red Dragons(Connor) video to talk about Marshal Mather’s movie 8 mile, rap battling, race and realness. So I posted the final rap battles that Eminem does in the movie 8 mile. Eminem’s career in rap battling was about proving his realness as an MC and his opponent’s unrealness, by proving that he was more real then other black rappers was the only way he would get accepted and respected as a rapper. A lot of Eminem’s respect comes from his verbal acrobatics but I don’t think that clever rhymes were enough for Eminem to prove himself. In his battling Marshal talks about how he grew up in on the 8 mile in a trailer, how he had to deal with poverty. Like we spoke about in class he claims his neighborhood and talks about struggle. Marshal then targets the other rapper and challenges his realness claiming that the other rapper went a privet school had a good home life, Marshal even samples Mobb deep which we listened to in class and says “there’s no such thing as a halfway crook” attracting his opponents realness once again. Eminem is claiming that since he has experienced oppression and struggle that he is more real then his black opponent.

Daniel Beady the spoken word poet talks about realness in one of his poems called “Emergence See”, In his poem he defines realness as caring about your community, the children in it, and having of awareness and responsibility. He also critiques the materialism of some rappers saying that gold chains and cars are a reflection of disconnect between rappers and there community. He samples Sam Cooks song “A Change is Gonna Come.” I think he is using it to say that a change is going to come when Rappers reconnect to the ghetto or community that made us who we are and give children more then they had.
Skip past the first minuet of the video