Decoding: "My Life" feat. 50 Cent, Eminem & Adam Levine

My Life is a recent single featuring 50 Cent, Eminem and Adam Levine. The song is in 50 Cent’s upcoming album Street King Immortal. I tried to decode the lyrics the way I understood them and I could be wrong.

Adam Levine’s hook expresses the suffocating pressure of living under the spotlight, a sentiment shared by celebrities being chased by the public everywhere they go. Also, the life-like-a-movie metaphor brings to mind Eminem’s 2002 semi-autobiographic film 8 Mile.

Moreover, the way each rapper smoothly eases into the hook deserves applause. It is a lyrical technique utilized by Eminem in many other songs. And the fact that 50 Cent is using it too demonstrates his respect for Eminem to whom 50 owes his life. The resulting harmony shows cooperation and bonhomie among all the song artists.

50 Cent’s first verse is his mini-autobiography for the past 10 years. He starts out by saying “Yeah, '03 I went from back filthy to filthy rich.” In 2003, 50 Cent released his hugely successful debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin' that both shot him to national fame and established his status in the Hip-hop industry. Ever since Mr Jackson has amassed obscenely huge amount of wealth. The exact meaning of “back filthy” is unclear.

The next line is iconically misogynic: “Man the emotions change so I can never trust a bitch.” Females started flocking to him for his cash and fame, for the perks of being associated with the hottest star in the game; those women are usually armed with their own agendas. As 50 Cent says of some girl named Tonya – whose name also appears in Eminem’s albums as skits, so it is reasonable to assume Tonya is just a symbol of women 50 deals with in general, instead of a real person - in Spent Some Time, who acted and talked “like an opportunist” and fornicating with him is “the real career move”. She told him she was “an inspiring actress”, hoping to sleep her way to stardom, only with 50 shaking his head in annoyance and sniggering “Yeah yeah, how many times have I heard that shit?” Jackson started distrusting women after getting romantically involved with women time and time again only to find their true motives later.

Either that, or it is just an objectification of women common in rap songs to enhance the rapper’s own masculinity and emotional independence from women.

Then 50 Cent drops the names of some artists with whom he had a beef. Back then when he was part of the G-Unit, 50 helped his homies Game and Buck who later became ungrateful for what 50 did for them. So in this song 50 tells them to perform fellatio on men. Not literally of course. Homophobic cursing is another way of strengthening the rapper’s own manliness while accusing the opponents of being weak and feminine.

But how exactly 50 helped them remains unclear until he spits the next lines, “Now when you hear 'em it may sound like it's some other shit / Cause I'm ain't writing anymore, they not making hits.” Now we know that 50 Cent once wrote songs for the two fellow rap artists. When we hear the songs of Game and Buck now, they don’t sound like before when 50 wrote the songs for them. He goes on to explain that the reason he stopped writing songs for them is that there hadn’t been much success.

The ensuing “I'm far from perfect, there's so many lessons I done learned” strikes us as odd since 50 Cent is not known for his humbleness, but the line is followed by “If money's evil look at all the evil I done earned”. Aha, classic bragging about money, Curtis Jackson style. It makes more sense now when you put the pieces together. The lessons learned are solely for the purpose of rhyming with money earned.

To wrap up his first verse, 50 Cent claims, “I'm a writer, I'm a fighter, entrepreneur”, referring to his book The 50^th Law, his survival of nine gunshots and his businesses of vitamin water and energy drinks. And “This is my recovery, my comeback in” is a shoutout to Eminem’s last Album “Recovery” and seamlessly slides into the hook.

Eminem has only one verse in the whole song, but it's lyrically complex, painfully dark, psychotically dangerous. His fast paced delivery is characteristic of his newly found and hitherto successful style he honed after he got over his addiction to Valium. Em seems to fancy this style whenever he teams up with other artists. His words are like bullets shot right into the souls of his enemies.

The verse has two parts, one about revenge, the other pressure. Getting revenge sounds like the motivation behind everything Eminem does. Eminem confessed in an interview with Anderson Cooper that all he wanted in this rap game is “respect” from other rap artists. Em sips on “revenge juice” before swooping down “spaghetti-even”. Classic wordplay by a rap genius. “I” and “he” appearing in the same verse may refer to Eminem’s alter egos. He names no names but condemns all who “betted against” or “voiced cocksuckin’ opinion to” (again, the homophobic accusation) him to throat cutting, electrocution and eternal remorse of what they have done to hurt him.

Then Eminem gets a little carried away by all the malicious things he says to some invisible enemies. “Feels like I'mma snap any minute, yeah, it's happening again / I'm thinking about the same Motherfuck everybody that's up in this bitch, but 50!” He is about to lose his sanity again just by the thought of the whole world against him except for his loyal disciple 50 Cent. “I rap myself right into this bubble, oh oh, I guess it's bubble wrap” Eminem is fed up with all the pressure mounting on him. The bubble metaphor also appears in Eminem’s Take From Me where he says “I live in a bubble, I struggle with the fame.” He then laments that his life is a vicious cycle. The more he raps, the more he feels trapped. And the Recovery album was a mistake since it seems like Eminem has relapsed again, ”Cause I'm running in circles with” his life he is trying to run away from in the hook.

While Eminem appears convincing that he really got issues with pressure and stuff, all 50 Cent does in the song is light-hearted bragging and wholesome ass kissing. In 50’s second verse, he says “I haven't been this fucking confused since I was a kid. Sold like 40 million records, people forgot what I did”. Mr Jackson, you are confused about why you are so rich and famous? You sold 40 million records and you are still complaining? Then he mentions “3 AM”, “lighter” both are songs in Eminem’s last albums.

Due to differences in lyrical and rhyming styles, 50 Cent appears laid-back, soft and harmless, while the white boy from Detroit upholds his badass alpha-maleness, as in his many other collaborations.