Hip Hop Rhetorical Devices

The style phase is associated to “the speaker’s language choices and sentence structure,’ (Sellnow, 2014, p. 38). In regards to tone, “Lose yourself’s” tone is informal because Eminem is storytelling through rap. He was explaining his situation and how he had to fix it. Throughout this song, he used a lot of metaphors and imagery. One of the metaphor’s Eminem uses is “His whole back's to these ropes, it don't matter, he's dope,” to give an example of when Rabbit was first battling in the shelter he felt his back was against the walls because he was intimidated over the intensity of the crowd and fear he might mess up but still has the confidence to say he is “dope.” Also, this quote was a play on words because he was a huge boxing fan he used ropes then dope to reference Muhammed Ali’s “Rope-a-dope” strategy.

He also used rhapsody as a lyric pun to say “Rap-city,” to mention Detroit, the city he is from is a rap-city and every person had made fun of him for choking. A third metaphor used is “This world is mine for the taking, make me king; As we move toward a New World Order.” He uses this metaphor to insinuate the moment he proves his potential and his ability to rap he will be seen as the king of rap and he will begin a “new world order.” “Ae we move toward a new world order,” is also referencing when Rabbit defeats the “Leaders of the free world” in his final battle at the end of 8mile. “He's known as the Globetrotter, lonely roads,” is another metaphor seen in Lose yourself that makes mention of hoe Eminem is always on the move, he never wants to settle down. This metaphor is another reference to sports as well because “Globetrotter” comes from the Harlem Globetrotter basketball