White Rappers Through the Lens of Cinema

It's me, the resident white boy.

This month, three things happened that have turned the rap world upside down:

• Drake returned with "What Did I Miss?"
• Clipse dropped their first album in a really long time
• ian's XXL freshman freestyle

I bet you can guess which one I want to talk about. (And, yeah, I know Tyler dropped yesterday... So there was that too!)

In one minute and 43 seconds, ian set the internet on fire with his freestyle that spawned the textual venom of thousands of internet trolls. Hate it or love it, his freestyle is by far the most viewed from this year's XXL Freshman Class, racking up over one million views this month. Is it because the freestyle is bad or is it because ian is white?

White rappers all lead back to one man — Vanilla Ice. Wait. No. Marky Mark? No! Em. It's Eminem.

You know him, you might even love him.

Back in 2002, Eminem put his life on the big screen in 8 Mile. I remember when we rented this from Rogers Video. On the back of DVD rentals, they would tell you all the warnings, like nudity, violence, and coarse language. 8 Mile had the best coarse-language count ever, at "too many to count." Iconic. Nine-year-old me was in. It was 2002; nobody was telling anybody what impressionable eyes and ears could or could not be exposed to.

For those too young to remember, or for those who just haven't seen it, Eminem plays B-Rabbit, a white battle rapper in Detroit who suffers from stage fright. The movie is about him getting over his fears and beginning his journey to becoming the best rapper alive.

Strangely enough, 8 Mile was the first real hip-hop movie about the come up of a rapper. Yes, there was Krush Groove about the origins of Def Jam Recordings, but 8 Mile took this A Star Is Born-type story and made it something visceral, dirty, raw. It's not an exaggeration to say that 8 Mile was the first modern hip-hop movie. There were plenty of hip-hop-influenced movies, like Do The Right Thing, Belly, Juice, but 8 Mile put the music at the forefront. It was about the craft. It was about the artist's come up.

Within a year, 8 Mile was parodied. Malibu's Most Wanted was about a white rapper named B-Rad who thinks he's gangster. This is how the world viewed the plethora of white rap fans who identified, for whatever reason, with hip-hop. A lot of them, like myself, discovered the genre through Eminem. Some thought it was like free tourism to the other side of the tracks. As J. Cole put it years later,

"And somewhere deep down, fuck it, I gotta keep it real

They wanna be black and think your song is how it feels"

That may be the case, but there's still the fact that the 1990s were rife with black movies that were hip-hop adjacent but never had the genre at the centre of their plots. They dealt with community issues, and were often gangster pictures that were like updated versions of Blaxploitation movies. Yet, the music form that was so revered as a black creation did not get its due on the big screen until Eminem did it.

After 8 Mile, which cleared $200-million at the box office, there was a string of these movies: Get Rich or Die Tryin', Notorious, All Eyez on Me, Straight Outta Compton.

What made 8 Mile stand out and what's made Eminem stand out like a sore thumb for his entire career is his skin colour. Whiter than a piece of Wonder Bread in a snowstorm, Em always had to deal with the fact that he was a white artist in a black medium. What made Em and his character B-Rabbit different was his belief that, if he was going to make it in the rap world, he was going to have to be so good that he was undeniable.

In real life, Eminem became undeniable almost instantly after bursting into the mainstream. It helped that his lyrics were so violent that it would make John Wayne Gacey turn it down out of discretion. At the time, adolescent angst was the most popular thing. You probably know the story anyways. If you don't, just listen to The Marshall Mathers LP and the picture should be clear regarding what sold in 2000.

In fiction, B-Rabbit struggled to become undeniable because of his battle with stage fright. Still, it was him overcoming these obstacles that made his freestyle at the movie's climax so memorable.

This freestyle became lore. Everyone had a bad Limewire rip of it on their iPod. Every white wannabe rapper in sixth grade studied every line, every inflection of voice, to see what Em was doing and why his bars were so dope.

What B-Rabbit did, and what the freestyle is remembered the most for, is that he took all the verbal weapons that Papa Doc would use against him and turned it against himself. At the same time, he eviscerated Papa Doc by revealing this wannabe gangster's idyllic upbringing:

"But I know something about you

You went to Cranbrook, that's a private school

What's the matter, dawg? You embarrassed?

This guy's a gangster? His real name's Clarence

And Clarence lives at home with both parents

And Clarence' parents have a real good marriage"

To be tough, to adhere to the thug-life style, was essential to battle rapping and creating the persona of a tough guy on the mic. This persona has largely remained unchanged in the history of hip-hop. To reveal such a prosperous upbringing like Clarence's was a headshot to his credibility.

While the need to have a thug persona has remained largely unchanged, the style and music of hip-hop has altered drastically in the 20-odd years since 8 Mile came out.

"Okay, let me give you motherfuckers some help

'Double X L! Double X L!'

Now your magazine shouldn't have so much trouble to sell

Aw, fuck it, I'll even buy a couple myself"

— Eminem on "Marshall Mathers"

The XXL Freshman Class is a yearly list released by XXL Magazine to keep their magazine relevant, sell some actual physical copies, and to highlight the newest and most exciting talent in the current rap scene. In 2013, a rapper named Chief Keef was on the list. This Chicago-based rapper would change the game forever by popularizing drill rap and a style later called mumble rap.

Since 2013, the lyrical-miracle style of rap that was highlighted in 8 Mile has become less and less popular. Modern rap fans have defended mumble rap like it's the sound of rap's next era, burying the styles from 8 Mile and Straight Outta Compton as relics. Nothing needs to rhyme. Nothing needs to make sense.

In 2025, a new era, the new token white boy is the mumble rapper that every old head loves to hate — ian.

Remember that lyric about Papa Doc? That's basically the ian origin story. ian attended an all-boys private high school. His parents have a real good marriage. He started rapping and almost instantly blew up, with a mixtape cover that was a meme and songs that were directly biting the style of the drill music and mumble rap that Chief Keef pioneered.

His skin colour, immediate success and affluent background made him an instant pariah in hip-hop circles. When Tyler calls you "weird," you know you've struck a chord.

All the comments on ian's XXL Freestlye on YouTube are flaming this guy and making jokes for his flow. All of a sudden, rap fans have returned to The Shelter and give a damn about lyrics? Or is it just the continued struggle for a white rapper to make it in a black-dominated art? Call it cultural appropriation, call it white privilege, call it what you want. The way I see it, all this hate only helps run up his internet numbers and make him the most popular Freshman of the year. Whereas B-Rabbit had to prove his worthiness to gain recognition, ian is gaining recognition for being everything that a rapper shouldn't be and not hiding it. With the styles of 8 Mile no longer appreciated, the need to be so good that you're undeniable no longer applies.

What will the next rap biopic be? There's no sense to give us another movie about the golden era of hip-hop. Most kids now weren't even alive for the release of 8 Mile, let alone have listened to Paid in Full. So they'll need a new generation of heroes. They'll make the Chief Keef biopic. Or the Juice WRLD biopic. They're already coming out with a Rolling Loud movie slated for 2026 (with fellow whites Owen Wilson and Matt Rife set to star).

Maybe they'll make the ian biopic, about a privileged white boy from St. Louis who started rapping, got signed to Columbia within a year, and a year later had the whole internet hating him because he said "damn, I'm on my Brittney shit, oops I hit again" (which is, unfortunately for the haters, a bar). He should have also said that he's on his Natasha Bedingfield shit, because the rest of ian's story is still unwritten.

8 Mile2002