In past years, many campaigns to get young voters out and voting such as MTV's rock the vote have been marginally successful but really failed to mobilize as many people as they'd have liked to using the "it's hip to vote" angle. Remakes of "What's Going On" and "Wake Up Everybody" by modern top 40 artists still rang in as trite and dated. There was already such a distance between the 18-21 year olds and the original versions of those songs that the the inspiration the new versions were attempting to borrow from failed to come across to the newer generations. However, it really caught my attention the other day to hear Cuban rapper Pitbull on a bootleg remix of America's #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 ("Low" by Flo Rida f/ T-Pain) saying "Me, I'm Diddy, Jay-Z, and a little bit of Biggie, gimme the Louis and I'll be out, what'chu think boy? Forget a debate, boy, they're feeling me like Obama and Hilary...."
The three conclusions that this causes me to draw on really makes me think that a more 'organic' (or 'bootleg') approach will be a more successful one if we're really going to try to mobilize youth culture using music. (1) Pitbull is trying to establish himself as an important figure by drawing comparisons between himself and hip-hop moguls/icons Diddy, Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G., and, in the same breath, says "They're feeling me like Obama and Hilary." This puts Obama and Hilary on the same level of importance (to the hip-hop audience) as several respected icons of the industry, thereby saying "Obama and Hilary are important to the hip-hop community, too." (2) Pitbull's rapping usually comes from a place that stands for the underdog and he is one of the few major Latino rappers in the game right now, so his endorsement via name-dropping of the Democratic candidates puts them in the minds of his intended audience which largely includes an urban Latino population. (3) The idea that these two figures are considered culturally relevant enough to be immortalized in song before they're even presidential candidates shows how significant this year's primaries are. He would not have included them in his lyrics if he did not think that people would still remember BOTH of them after the primaries next month.
This wasn't a political anthem and it's not a song about rocking the vote. He wasn't paid to mention them. I think there's a hip factor that Obama and Clinton possess that make them a believable part of a rap song, something that wouldn't feel as organic as name dropping a stuffy, old, rich, white heterosexual male senator from a red state.
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4 comments:
I tend to lean more with #3 myself, Joey! I'm not sure if politics now are cooler, that Pitbull references the candidates simply because this is what's being talked about in the present moment, or if their names just happened to rhyme with whatever he was talking about! I do think that while it's a rather inane reference and I wouldn't read that much into it, it does indicate that politics have, and probably always will, permeate into all aspects of pop culture. Hip hop included.
thanks Joey. After reading I realized for the first time that this campaign, if Clinton or Obama win, will probably be a remembered as a generational passing of the torch. Not in the same sense that Kennedy symbolized to his followers a new generation of leaders because he was young and handsome and Eisenhower was old and bald. As you point out it's cool now to rally behind the "difference" candidates, Obama and Clinton (perhaps even blindly). On the one hand, strong youth support builds on the previous generation's struggles for social justice. On the other hand, it symbolizes this generation's reaction to their parents' inability to deliver electoral victories that could realize the promises of civil rights and second wave feminism. On the one hand, continuity, on the other, a sharp break--in both senses, younger people are feeling ownership and are making a mark.
When Jesse Jackson ran for the nomination in 1984 and 1988, the news media was obsessed with his "pioneer" status--the first black nominee, the first black president, was America ready? Now, it seems unnecessary, even insulting to our contemporary sensibilities, to mention this. Of course, no one has been elected to anything yet ...
I'm not trying to say that politics are cool BECAUSE Pitbull references them, but rather, that the current democratic candidates have made politics more Accessible and Acceptable as subjects of discussion/lyrical fodder for a broader range of media in a way that prior candidates have not done. Sure, there are rap lyrics about Bush, Clinton, and probably Bob Dole somewhere, even Al Gore, but those are more about taking cheap stabs or keeping rap's long honored anti-authoritarian spirits alive: this lyric holds the candidates in ESTEEM rather than using them as a punchline or as a manifestation of "the man" or a corrupt establishment.
I would agree with ahicks in the sense that the Clinton/Obama race is a major topic of discussion. But on the otherhand Joey brings up a good by pointing out that rather than demoralizing or "bashing" the cadidates, Pitbull is connecting them with well known and successfull artists and producers in the music industry. Especially interesting concerning the way that the two of them attacked each other in the debate in South Carolina.
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