8 Mile Rap Battle

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Part of a series on Eminem. [View Related Entries]

About

8 Mile Rap Battle refers to a memorable scene from 2002 film 8 Mile in which main protagonist B-Rabbit, portrayed by Eminem, competes in a rap battle against character Papa Doc and other rival rappers. Online, the scene has often been used in parodies, with lyrics sung by B-Rabbit replaced with other music.

Origin

On November 8th, 2002, drama film 8 Mile premiered in the United States.^[1] The film follows the story of an aspiring Detroit rapper Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith Jr., portrayed by Eminem. In one of the final scenes of the film, B-Rabbit competes in a rap battle against several rival rappers.

This guy ain't no motherfucking MC
I know everything he's 'bout to say against me
I am white, I am a fucking bum
I do live in a trailer with my mom.

Spread

On February 20th, 2015, Vine user goofys posted the earliest viral meme based on the scene in which B-Rabbit's lyrics were replaced with a humorous narration.^[2] The video gained over 253,800 likes and 46.4 million loops on Vine.

- Hi, my name is Eminem, your girl want an M&M, so I gave her an M&M, M&M&M&M.
- Oh my gawd!

In the following years, more notable memes based on the scene were posted on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms.^[3] On August 5th, 2019, Instagram user sirswen posted an edit in which Eminem's lyrics had been replaced with "Already Dead" by Lil Boom, with the edit gaining over 45,300 views and 8,700 likes in one month (shown below).^[4] Reposts of the edit by the Instagram user squidword.memes^[5] and iFunny user arla^[6] received additional 748,000 views and 64,300 smiles in the same period respectively, prompting a surge in the use of the meme in the following weeks.