"25 to Life" from Eminem's Recovery (2010)

Play "25 to Life" by Eminem on the playlist at the right side of the screen. You may want to click Play then Pause, then let the song load before clicking Play again.

Click http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eminem/25tolife.html for the lyrics. Please excuse Eminem's profanity, swearing 11 times in a song is probably a record minimum for him. I truly believe he creates an amazing metaphor in this song.

            In the song “25 to Life” from Eminem’s most recent album Recovery (2010), Eminem raps about his dedication to his career as a hip-hop artist and how the hip-hop industry has taken control of his life. He creates a simple yet brilliant metaphor between a woman he had a relationship with (most likely his ex-wife Kim) and the hip-hop industry. Eminem refers to this hip-hop industry as a “selfish bitch” who has “imprisoned” him for a “life sentence” (hence the title of this song).

Upon listening to this song for the very first time, I thought Eminem was rapping about his ex-wife Kim. He plays along with this metaphor of some woman with whom he “wasted over half his life” for the entire first verse. It appears Kim has done something to hurt Eminem when he says “You know what you've done, no need to go in depth. // I told you, you'd be sorry if I fucking left. // I’d laugh while you wept.” The personalization he creates with human-like actions such as feeling sorry and weeping further convince listeners that the thing he is leaving is a person, not a career.

Eminem creates an enigma at the beginning of the second verse when he says “Don't think I'm loyal, // All I do is rap. // How can I moonlight on the side? // I have no life outside of that.” Here is where we finally start to question whether this song is about Kim or his career as a hip-hop artist. In the first verse, it seems like Kim does not want Eminem to be married to his work. Eminem says he is “always in a rush to get back” to her, possibly meaning he works long hours and she wishes he would come home sooner.

However, the introduction of his loyalty to rap and his inability to “moonlight on the side” (do anything other than rap) starts to change the listener’s opinion about whether Eminem’s conflict is between him and his ex-wife or between him and his rap career. We question this once more when he switches back to lines about his relationship with Kim when he says, “Jealous when I spend time with the girls. // Why I'm married to you still man I don't know, // But tonight I'm serving you with papers, // I'm divorcing you.” At this point we are still unsure whether he is literally divorcing Kim or if he is announcing the end of his rap career. However, Eminem finally discloses the enigma with harsh words: “Fuck you hip-hop, // I'm leaving you! // My life sentence is served, bitch!” These lines make it perfectly clear that he wants to quit rapping, not that he is divorcing Kim (in fact, he is already divorced and does not plan to reunite with her).

I believe Eminem made this last CD, Recovery (2010) as a closure to his career. He blames the poor quality of his previous CD’s, Encore (2004) and Relapse (2009) on his addiction to narcotic drugs. Now that he has cleaned his body of the drugs and proved to his fans that he is still one of the best rappers to ever live, he will successfully end his rap career on a high note if he so chooses. The song “25 to Life” instantly became one of my favorites because the metaphor he used worked tremendously to confuse me but later clarify how he feels about his career.

Iconic Image: Wall Street and WWII

            During the Stock Market Crash of 1929, people flooded Wall Street trying to withdraw as much money as possible from their bank accounts. The banks had become insolvent, meaning they could not pay the account holders their cash because the banks had loaned out or invested most of the money in the failing stock market. When the value of stocks plummeted the country went into a panic, eventually leading up to the Great Depression. While there is no single iconic image of the stock market crash, there were many images from different camera angles taken during this panic in which people flooded Wall Street, trying to withdraw their cash from the banks.

In class, we discussed how Wall Street is a metonym for the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression in the United States. However, I think Wall Street can be a metonym for a much broader issue experienced around the world: the rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War. We must remember the Great Depression did not only affect the United States economy, but the world economy was crushed as well. Adolf Hitler and other Nazis in Germany blamed its economic problems (which were really caused by hyperinflation – printing so much paper money that it holds little value – and extensive war reparations paid by the Germans after the First World War) on the work of Jewish bankers in Germany. As a Jewish accounting major, I obviously find it offensive that one religious group was blamed for the faults of many bankers and investors. Bankers were lending money to people who did not have the income to pay off their loans, and the debtors of these loans decreased their assets by investing most of their cash in stocks which rapidly declined in value.

While these images of people flooding the banks on Wall Street in 1929 have not been altered in any way, they have taken on a wider horizon of meanings depending on the interpretation of the viewer. At first, I simply made the association of Wall Street with the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression. I realized later that these images of Wall Street can be representative of World War II.