Eminem’s final rap battle in 8 Mile has been recreated by a New York Jets player as part of the team’s rookie talent show.
Appearing in the third episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks on Tuesday (August 22), the Jets rookies put their talents on display after an epic failure of a first attempt — and undrafted free agent wide receiver Jerome Kapp stole the show.
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Kapp entered the practice facility meeting room in a skull cap with his hood up and broke out into an impressive imitation of Eminem/B-Rabbit’s performance in the final battle of 8 Mile, which saw him dismantle Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie) over Mobb Deep’s classic “Shook Ones, Part II” instrumental.
Without a backing track to help, the 24-year-old memorized the scene and had the crowd pumped up as other Jets players rapped along. Kapp even cut out the instrumental for the final few bars just like B-Rabbit did in the 2002 movie.
The 8 Mile remake has been one of the standout moments in an entertaining season of Hard Knocks.
Unfortunately for the Kutztown University graduate, Jerome Kapp isn’t expected to make the final Jets roster, but he will have one more opportunity to prove himself on Saturday night (August 26) in a pre-season game against the cross-town rival New York Giants.
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As for 8 Mile, Eminem’s movie debut arrived to much fanfare in November 2002 and grossed over $242 million at the box office with a budget of only $41 million.
Marshall Mathers recently reflected on his battle rap origins and spoke about how grateful he was to have cut his teeth in that environment.
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“Coming up in the battle scene was the greatest thing to happen to me because I knew what lines were going to get a reaction from the crowd. That’s what I would focus on,” he told The New York Times.
“So when I got signed with [Dr.] Dre, I was trying to translate that to record, to get that reaction. I would picture the listener sitting there and what lines they might react to. I just used that as a formula. Like, ‘How you gonna breastfeed, Mom?/ You ain’t got no tits.’”
50 Cent revealed plans for an 8 Mile TV series earlier this year, which he expects to help further cement the Detroit rap icon’s legacy.
He shared new details about the project during an interview with Big Boy earlier in August and claimed it will be “just as big as the feature film.”
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“It’ll be huge,” he said. “The interest in it is because the time period of 8 Mile was capturing further back, so as we move it into modern times you’ll see things about how we function now, how technology changed the way people enter the music business.”
