Five rappers who have won an Oscar
Can you believe only a few rappers have won an Academy Award? Considering just how omnipresent hip hop is in international, especially American, culture, and that two Oscars must be awarded every year for ‘Best Original Song’ and ‘Best Original Score’, one would be forgiven to expect hip hop to have more of a presence on the call sheet.
Yes, admittedly, no one is expecting their favourite rapper to pick up the baton and compose an original score for a movie, let alone an Oscar-winning original score.
Regardless, only three rappers have won the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Song’: Eminem, Three 6 Mafia, and Common. Representing his genre for one of the highest accolades in the entertainment industry, Will Smith won ‘Best Actor’, and bringing us to five is Diddy, who served as the executive producer of a winning documentary.
Here’s more on the five rappers who have won an Oscar.
Five rappers who have won an Oscar:
5. Eminem
Sometimes in the overlapping worlds of music and film, the latter made for the former can take on such a life of its own that it becomes, over time, more celebrated than the form it was made for. Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’, written for the semi-autobiographical 8 Mile, is such an instance. With lyrics exploring themes of family and poverty, and Eminem’s world-renowned intensity of delivery, it remains an anthem for the downtrodden today.
‘Lose Yourself’ did not just win an Oscar, but multiple Grammys too, and the achievements of this song can be felt beyond shiny trophies: it is credited for ushering in the hip hop genre into the realm of high cinema, showing that these were emotive, narrative artists to be taken seriously.
4. Three 6 Mafia
Three years after Eminem’s win came Three 6 Mafia’s turn, snagging an Oscar win in 2006 for ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’, written for the film Hustle & Flow. Unlike ‘Lose Yourself’, this song represented the Southern rap scene, proving themselves and their home on an international level, appropriate for the film, which follows a Memphis pimp who aspires to become a rapper.
The song itself is a wicked fusion of Southern rap’s breakneck energy with gritty lyricism and wider Southern culture. Their acceptance speech was joyous, too: the group’s rappers Juicy J, DJ Paul and Frayser Boy were ecstatic to be the first hip hop group to win an Oscar.
3. Common
One particularly memorable song from the long, illustrated list of ‘Best Original Song’ is that of rapper Common and singer John Legend’s ‘Glory’, which was penned for Selma, the 2014 film that depicts the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches of the Civil Rights Movement. Common also starred in the film as Civil Rights leader James Bevel.
The song itself entwines hip hop with gospel influences and a bit of soul that perfectly presents the pain and suffering of the 1960s to the present day. The hip hop element acts as somewhat of a bridge between the past and the present, with Common’s verses championing courage and hope, while Legend’s voice stays achingly emotional.
2. Will Smith
Where were you when Will Smith dominated headlines across the world for slapping Chris Rock? The Oscars, unlike its counterparts, the MTV Awards and even the Grammys, is one of the most esteemed award ceremonies in the industry, so Smith’s slap in defence of his wife Jada Pinkett Smith felt utterly unprecedented.
It was such a shock that it’s somehow a bit forgotten that Smith actually won his first Oscar that year for his portrayal of Serena and Venus Williams’ father, Richard, in the film King Richard. Starting off his career as a rapper and then moving towards acting, Smith’s career trajectory is one of the most successful in the industry. An Oscar for best stunt double next?
1. Diddy
While Diddy has not explicitly won an Oscar personally, it can and will be argued that he did in his own right through serving as executive producer for the Oscar-winning documentary, Undefeated. The film centres around a high school football team in Memphis, following the struggles, challenges and triumphs of both the players and the coaches.
His high profile brought both attention and funding to the project, in which the themes mirrored not just the subjects of his own lyrics, but those of hip hop as a genre. The visibility that his role within the documentary granted aided its campaign to win the Oscar for ‘Best Documentary Feature’ in 2012.