The kickass woman who covered Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” in sign language

In five minutes, Shelby Mitchusson took a classic Eminem song and made it 100 times more powerful. Last year, the sign language interpreter stood before a camera and translated the entire song into American Sign Language (adding some rad dance moves into the mix). This week, the world stopped everything and took notice.

Mitchusson’s video went totally viral, with thousands of shares on Facebook and hundreds of YouTube commenters praising her efforts.

To be clear, Mitchusson didn’t expect her video to go viral. In a post on Facebook, she thanked her supporters and provided more a backstory as to why she posted the video.

“I uploaded it purely for interpreting,” she wrote. “Actually it was my interpreter application submission video to work with an amazing interpreting team at Austin City Limits 2014. I got the gig and still my heart flutters with how well our team worked together equally and the fact that finally these companies are opening their eyes to the true hidden gem talent of Deaf performers & Deaf people signing music — which we NEED to see more of!”

Recently, the music industry has begun embracing and acknowledging the deaf community—with major festivals like Lollapalooza bringing interpreters to the stage (see: professional interpreter Amber Galloway Gallego’s now-classic translation of Kendrick Lamar’s “F**cking Problems”) and prominent musicians like Sia using American Sign Language in their music videos.

Now Mitchusson is continuing to bridge the gap in the most awesome way. Though she’s only posted three videos on YouTube, expect to see a lot more from her soon. “I have a deep love for interpreting music and would love to share more as I am always interpreting music,” she wrote in the comments section. “Again, thank you all – I’ll upload more soon.”

In the meantime, check out her glorious video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAofkVHZOQ