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Today, 05 July 2008

» 'Recognise me or no talks'

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Enter the world of dilapidated inner-city ghettoes, mundane nine to five machine work, trailer parks and one totally underestimated rapper by the name of… wait for it… Rabbit.

Hang on, can you just repeat that? Rabbit, what kind of name is that for some white homey pretending to be the real Slim Shady? And why, if he proclaims to be the master rapper, is he always so twitchy with his moods?

Maybe it’s because Rabbit, despite his love for the rhyming yarn, is heading down a dead end faster than you can say “wicky wicky Slim Shady”.

Here stuck in the rot of inner city Detroit, a down and out mix of abandoned grey buildings and ghetto chancers, Rabbit is forced to exist day in and day out off a yawn-a-second job and a prefab trailer house he shares with his jobless and pathetic single mum.

Played by Kim Bassinger (still well-kitted out never-the-less), the depiction of ma isn’t all too far from what you’d come to expect. Had you checked the vid for 'The Real Slim Shady' you would’ve recognised the woozy unambitious sloth that is mom who eventually succumbs to her calling (but I’ll leave you to guess what that is).

Rabbit meanwhile is seen busting rhymes all over the place — outside his crumbling fibreglass trailer, a club toilet and even in the yard of the Detroit car assembly plant where he unwillingly finds himself employed — ripping through all the no good white trash haters that seem to gravitate towards him.

But despite his gift of the gab, young Rabbit still can’t seem to pluck up the courage to joust it out with his fellow rappers down at the local hip hop club. Then while he’s umming and aahing he gets sold out, beat up by the ones he trusts and kicked around by the woman he digs.

On top of this he has to live in Detroit — a dead broke neighbourhood infested by poor blacks and well, um, trailer trash whites where everyone, including himself, want out. So he’s fuming, amassing all the weapons of vocabularic assault he can muster in an effort to retaliate against suburban rich kids and their cushy private schools.

It’s quite apt, because the movie itself takes its name from the road which divides the northern suburbs from the fast deteriorating Detroit, separating the haves from the have-nots. This is something Gautengers can well relate to with the ongoing exodus of persons, processions and property from the central ganglands of Johannesburg to the northern burbs of Sandton.

Like all things associated with rap to come out of America, the movie created a stir among government elite and even provoked an outcry from Detroit public officials who boycotted the premier last year saying it unjustly tainted the once golden Michigan city as one big ghetto.

Yet gone are the days of thought-provoking rap when groups like Public Enemy and NWA (Niggas with Attitude) harped on about racist US capitalism and destructive housing policies.

Now, as '8 Mile' hits South African screens thousands of rich kid wiggas instead of milling over Detroit city’s dark rap roots will simply shovel home popcorn as they gawk and splutter at the street cred of one of America’s wealthiest bards — Rabbit M Mathers.