As much as I detest rap, and lack interest in entertainers in general, I was glad to get my hands on a copy of this DVD. Indeed I have been haunted by the fact that myself and America’s preeminent ‘whigger’ [as stated by black characters in this autobiographical movie] have one very specific thing in common: we both dropped out of high school on our 16th birthday! I almost got sick when I heard that.

I knew that this story took place in late 1990s Detroit, the epicenter of our slow motion American apocalypse. This movie is worth seeing just for the location shoots and the anthropological value of the ghettoized culture. Actually, I got a childish thrill out of the scene where the lead character shoots a parked cop car with a paintball gun. When I was that age I used to clean a supermarket parking lot where cops parked overnight and had sex with hookers and other cops [yuck!]. I had to clean up the liquor bottles, cigarette butts, condoms and panties at seven in the morning. As a young man I used to fantasy about knocking in some cop’s car windows with the head of my push broom while the two cops within sodomized each other.

As for the rap, it is important. Well read readers will likely view this art form as a symptom of the fall of Western Civilization, as I once did. However, it is symptomatic of its rebirth if you have read your Homer and other ancient Greek poets. This might come as a surprise to African-identified rappers. Rap is not song, but oral poetry intended to lionize the speaker and belittle rivals. If you went back in time to watch an ancient Indo-European battle, whether it was between Irish cannibals or Hellenic maniacs, you would see two ‘rappers’ step out between the battle lines and chant smack talk to pump the warriors up for a shield clash.

Next to The Book of Eli, 8 Mile is the best Post Apocalyptic movie I’ve seen lately.