Who was the first rapper to win an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Song’?
The Academy Awards are usually a decade or two behind the zeitgeist of the broader film industry.
In the year of John Huston’s film noir masterpiece The Maltese Falcon and Orson Welles’ magnum opus Citizen Kane, it was the traditional Hollywood period drama How Green Was My Valley that walked away with ‘Best Picture’. In the year of The Favourite, Roma, and BlackKklansman, it was the woefully outdated Green Book that inexplicably took home the hardware.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that it took until the early 2000s for the Academy to acknowledge hip-hop, which was about four decades after artists like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa pioneered the genre. Although the vast majority of hip-hop’s history revolves around Black culture in America, it was Eminem who took home the genre’s first Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ in 2003 thanks to his track ‘Lose Yourself’, from the semi-autobiographical drama, 8 Mile.
Just two years later, Three 6 Mafia and Frayser Boy won the award for ‘It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp’, which was featured in Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow. In 2015, Common took home the third hip-hop-related Oscar for the song ‘Glory,’ which appeared in Ava DuVernay’s historical drama, Selma. The accolade put Common one step closer to an EGOT following previous Grammy and Emmy wins.
Will Smith is the only other rapper to have won an Oscar so far, though his award for ‘Best Actor’ in the biopic King Richard was unrelated to music. In 2019, Sounwave, Kendrick Lamar, Anthony Tiffith, and SZA were nominated for ‘Best Song’ for ‘All the Stars,’ which featured in Black Panther but lost to Lady Gaga’s ‘Shallow’ from A Star is Born.
Eminem’s Academy Awards
Despite being critically acclaimed, 8 Mile was only nominated for one Oscar. The Academy would have been incredibly foolish to pick any other song to win that year. It is one of the few tracks to ever be nominated for a ‘Best Song’ award that was a hit independent of its film. ‘Lose Yourself’ was Eminem’s first number-one single and held the top spot for twelve weeks in a row. It remains one of his most beloved tracks, even by fans who have never seen 8 Mile or were born after the song won an Oscar.
Although his win was a historic first, Eminem did not attend the ceremony. In 2020, the rapper explained to Variety that it wasn’t some kind of statement – he simply didn’t think he had a chance to win. He wasn’t even clear about why he was being nominated in the first place. Instead, he was at home with his daughter. “I didn’t watch [the ceremony], either,” he revealed. “At that point in time Hailie had to be at school early in the morning, so [I was sleeping].”
Luckily, he did not only have one shot at the opportunity to stand on the Oscars stage. 17 years after missing out on receiving the award in person; he surprised audiences by striding onto the stage at the 92nd Academy Awards and performing ‘Lose Yourself’ in front of an ecstatic crowd.
