{"id":244,"date":"2012-03-14T20:03:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T01:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/?p=244"},"modified":"2013-12-27T13:28:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T18:28:48","slug":"wheres-the-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/2012\/03\/14\/wheres-the-love\/","title":{"rendered":"He Used to Love H.I.P. H.O.P."},"content":{"rendered":"

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So it’s March already, less than 8 months until the presidential election, and it’s difficult not to notice that hip hop has been left out of Obama’s campaign this time around. Leading up to 2008, he found all kinds of opportunities to associate himself with hip hop, tapping the energy of the music and culture to motivate young people across the U.S. to hit the polls. \u00a0I think it’s safe to say his strategy worked–and with the exception of the occasional stupid lyric (think Ludacris’s “Politics: Obama is Here”<\/span><\/a><\/span>), there was minimal fallout. \u00a0I definitely admired Obama for this–previous presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican, generally went out of their way to distance<\/em>\u00a0themselves from hip hop. \u00a0Bill Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment<\/span><\/a><\/span>” comes up all the time, even now. \u00a0Obama flipped the script on all of that.<\/p>\n

But after the election, the love for hip hop seemed to dry up<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and now, in 2012, I think it’s fair to say that the Obama campaign is straight-up scared of it. \u00a0 The president’s playlist<\/span><\/a><\/span>, 29 songs long, has plenty of country but not a single rap song. \u00a0No way this is accidental. \u00a0It’s also not hard to figure out why the campaign is reluctant to go near rap. \u00a0When Common, one of the most positive and socially conscious rappers out there, was invited to the White House last May, right wing critics like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove had a field day<\/span><\/a><\/span>, cherry picking (and intentionally misinterpreting) lyrics from his Def Jam poem “Letter to the Law.” \u00a0All of a sudden Common of all people was branded a violent thug and a would-be cop killer, even though anyone who has listened to Common knows he regularly takes a stand against violence in hip hop. \u00a0His track “I Used to Love H.E.R.” became a classic with this very message:<\/p>\n