Eminem in '8 Mile'

Eminem

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Why Eminem's "Lose Yourself" Stands Tall: For The Record

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Learn why this hit from the '8 Mile' soundtrack is the focal point of the GRAMMY-winning rapper's career
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Nov 9, 2017 - 2:15 pm

With hits like "Stan" and "Love The Way You Lie," "My Name Is" and "Without Me," Eminem's catalog is littered with iconic songs. But "Lose Yourself," from the soundtrack to his semiautobiographical feature film 8 Mile, stands a cut above the rest as the best work of the rapper's storied career.

For The Record: Eminem's "Lose Yourself"

Following its release in October 2002, "Lose Yourself" gave Eminem his first-ever trip to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Hot 100, and to date has been certified platinum or multi-platinum in more than 12 countries around the world. The single also sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Written on the 8 Mile film set between takes, and recorded in a special mobile studio set up in a spare courtesy trailer, the song would become the most highly decorated single of Eminem's career so far.

"Lose Yourself" was nominated for five GRAMMYs, including Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year, at the 46th GRAMMY Awards, with Eminem taking home two golden gramophones for Best Male Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song.

The track also earned the distinction of winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Eminem the first rapper — and "Lose Yourself" the first rap song — to take home an Oscar in the category.

Residente in 2017

Residente

Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage.com

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Residente Wins Best Urban Song | 18th Latin GRAMMYs

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The Puerto Rican rapper was nominated for a total of nine Latin GRAMMY Awards
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Nov 16, 2017 - 5:47 pm

Residente has won the Latin GRAMMY for Best Urban Song, for "Somos Anormales," from his debut solo album Residente, at the 18th Latin GRAMMYs.

Residente Wins Best Urban Song

"Listen up. Thank you. Thank you. I am going to say some abnormal words. First, I give thanks to the Academy. … I want to remind the whole world … that art has nothing to do with figures. We, the artists, are not numbers, we are not figures, we are not data. We do things that we feel and we throw it out to the scene because we feel it with total honesty, and that's what we are rewarding here. So please, please to the whole world, stop posting the amount of followers, the amount of views, the amount of things, and start talking more about the music, about the producers, and who produced the music — the lyrics, which is what is lacking. Long live Puerto Rico. … To all of the urban people, the rappers for real, the MCs that give it all to the rhyme: Thank you for inspiring me. Kase.O, thank you. To the whole world, thank you with all my heart." —​ Residente

This is Residente's – née René Pérez – second win of the evening, having earlier won the award for Best Urban Music Album for his self-titled debut solo album.

His fellow nominees in the category tonight were Língua Franca, Nicky Jam, Pitbull & J Balvin, and Lápiz Consciente.

See The Complete List Of Winners From The 18th Latin GRAMMYs

Residente in 2017

Residente

Photo: Bryan Steffy/WireImage.com

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Residente Wins Best Urban Music Album | 18th Latin GRAMMY Awards

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The Puerto Rican rapper and Calle 13 co-founder is nominated for a total of nine awards tonight
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Nov 16, 2017 - 1:50 pm

Residente won his first of two Latin GRAMMYs of the evening, taking home the award for Best Urban Music Album, for his debut solo album Residente, at the 18th Latin GRAMMYs.

Residente Wins Best Urban Music Album Latin GRAMMY

"Thank you for this. There are so many people that I have to thank for this starting with my family who stood by me and supported me for 2 years because this album took me 2 years to complete. To my country, Puerto Rico which I love that doesn’t get up because its always been on its feet. To the producers that worked that worked like Rafa and Jeff that worked hard with me. To all of the countries that I visited Burkina Faso, Ghana, Siberia and I forget all of them but there were lots of them. Thank you for this, and I want you to know that Urban music has to do with not dressing like a rapper and a bandana, and firearms but with telling the story of what happens around us without fear and total honesty. Thank you!" – Residente

This is Residente's – née René Pérez – sixth Latin GRAMMY win in the category, having previously won the award five times as album producer for and as a member of Calle 13.

His fellow nominees in the category tonight were J Álvarez, Kase.O, Arianna Puello, and Rael.

As a founding member of Calle 13, currently the top Latin GRAMMY winners of all time, Pérez has previously taken home a whopping 22 Latin GRAMMY Awards, including two wins for Latin Album Of The Year. The group took home nine awards in a single night at the 12th Latin GRAMMYs, and tonight Pérez is once again nominated for a total of nine Latin GRAMMY Awards.

"I want you to know that urban music has to do with not dressing like a rapper and a bandana and firearms," Pérez said in his acceptance speech. "But with telling the story of what happens around us without fear and total honesty."

See The Complete List Of Winners From The 18th Latin GRAMMYs

Chuck D, of Public Enemy, in 2017

Chuck D

Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images

News

Chuck D's Hip-Hop History Book "Could Have Been 3,000 Pages Long"

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Learn what the iconic rapper has to say about his latest written overview of hip-hop's storied roots
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Nov 8, 2017 - 12:04 pm

Rapper, activist and Public Enemy co-founder Chuck D has made cataloguing the ins and outs of hip-hop's 40-plus year history a pet project since first falling in love with the genre.

"The first hint I got of the music itself was as a teenager in New York," Chuck D told Billboard of his first encounter with rap in the mid-'70s, "I was like 'What is this Muhammad Ali-type stuff on top of music?' The technology aspect of it bit me."

Chuck previously wrote at length about his thoughts on the state of rap in his 1997 book, Fight The Power, but the idea of distilling the collected history of the musical form and its associated subgenres into a definitive play-by-play of its progression and development — and making it approachable and accessible even to the uninitiated or casual fan — has remained on his bucket list. Chuck D Presents This Day In Rap And Hip-Hop History seeks to do just that.

"It could have been a series," he said regarding the breadth of ground he had to cover. "But the thing you learn when doing something like this is the gift of truncating and balance."

"The book could have been 1,500 to 3,000 pages," he adds.

With so much history condensed into just 352 pages, Chuck D confessed that part of the difficulty was remaining neutral and not allowing personal nostalgia to shift too much focus to the early years of rap history, when so much change and development has taken place in the past decade.

"You can't have any biases," he said. "You've got to be astute enough and have respect for all periods of the music in order to make great parables and comparisons to the classic stuff that’s already revered."

Chuck D Presents This Day In Rap And Hip-Hop History is out now, and is available in print or digital version wherever books are sold.

BET's "The Bobby Brown Story" Coming Fall 2018

Questlove and Black Thought in 2017

Questlove and Black Thought

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for MT

News

'Rap Yearbook' To Join AMC Visionaries Lineup As New Miniseries

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The bestselling year-by-year breakdown of the greatest songs in rap history will soon be a new docu-miniseries on AMC, executive produced by the Roots' Questlove and Black Thought
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Aug 1, 2017 - 9:32 am

AMC's new forays into deep-dive documentary style programming will soon bear musical fruit, with the newly announced six-part miniseries The Rap Yearbook — based on Shea Serrano's critically acclaimed bestselling book of the same name — set to premiere on the network in 2018.

Serrano's year-by-year breakdown of the progression of the rap game, from its earliest iterations in 1979 to its place atop the throne of popular music in 2015, spotlights key songs from each year and assesses their significance — analyzing what each track has to say about the genre, the artists and the cultural moment of its place in music history.

The televised version of Serrano's work will be included as part of AMC's new "Visionaries" initiative, which will feature a variety of new limited-run series that AMC President Charlie Collier has characterized as, "all about going deep into areas of fan passion," in a recent interview with Variety. Hosts and contributors to the discussion will include legacy artists, music experts and other giants of the scene. Multi-GRAMMY winners Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter of the Roots have been tapped as the executive producers charged with helping shape the new show's overarching vision.

Similar to the format of the show's source material, each episode will center on debate and introspection about key moments in the development of hip-hop, framed around a particular song that is clearly emblematic of an important shift in the genre.

The announcement of the new show signals the endgame of a long development process for the televised iteration of Serrano's The Rap Yearbook; it was initially teased by Fader as far back as March 2016 that an expanded documentary version could be forthcoming.

Serrano is, of course, justifiably stoked about the new project.

 Cast Your Vote: What Was The Most Influential Rap Track Of The 2000s?