Today marks the 17th anniversary of the 8 Mile soundtrack, which was released just ahead of the Eminem-starring film of the same name. The album is best known for its Oscar-winning lead single, “Lose Yourself,” performed by Eminem himself. Five years ago, the Detroit rapper hopped on Genius to reflect on the song in a series of verified annotations.
According to Em, he took the guitar loop for the beat from a demo recorded two years earlier. “I found the ‘Lose Yourself’ demo on this session where me and Jeff Bass were just making beats,” the Shady Records boss wrote in an annotation. “Jeff was just sitting on those guitar chords, and then it went into something different. I was just like ‘Yo, that section, right there, I gotta make a beat out of that.’”
Em recorded a demo version of the track at the time, but put it off to the side until 8 Mile director Curtis Hanson wanted him to make music for the movie from the perspective his character, Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith, Jr.
“I ended up doing the new version on the set of the movie, just writing between takes,” Em remembered. “I think ‘Lose Yourself’ was the only thing I worked on specifically for the movie.”
In the midst of juggling his acting and music responsibilities, Em still managed to record each of his “Lose Yourself” verses in one take:
We were on lunch break, and I needed to finish the track. I don’t think it was one take all the way down, but it was one take each verse. ‘Got the first verse, okay, punch me in at the second. OK, the whole third verse.’ For some reason, I just captured something there that I didn’t want to change. I remember trying to change it and go back and re-do the vocals, and I was like ‘Yo, let me listen to the old ones? Just keep the old ones, fuck it.’
Em broke down the memorable opening lines to the first verse in a separate annotation:
In another annotation, Em opened up about the initial difficulties he encountered while writing the song’s lyrics:
I’m playing this character, but I have to make parallels between my life and his, in this song. I gotta figure out how to reach a medium. It would sound so corny if I was just rapping as Jimmy Smith Jr. How is that going to come from a real place? If I’m telling you that my daughter doesn’t have diapers, I need this amount of money to pay my bills this month, and it’s some real shit I’m telling you, then you know that it’s just coming from me. That was the trick I had to figure out—how to make the rhyme sound like him, and then morph into me somehow, so you see the parallels between his struggles and mine.
Following its release, the critically acclaimed track became the first hip-hop song to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003. One year later, it won Grammys for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance.
“Lose Yourself” also became Em’s first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The track held the record for the longest-running No. 1 hip-hop song on the chart until this July, when it was surpassed by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.”
In 2014, fans got to hear the original demo version of “Lose Yourself” when Em released it as a bonus track on his label’s 15th anniversary Shady XV compilation. According to Em, however, he barely remembered recording it with the exception of one rhyme:
“This is going to sound stupid, but I have no recollection of the demo version on Shady XV,” Em wrote in an annotation. “Paul remembers me doing that but I don’t know where I recorded it, I don’t even know when I recorded it. I did a lot of drugs, so my memory is all over the place.”
Listen to the song above, and read all the lyrics to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” on Genius now.
