Hip-Hop, Donald Trump, the Black Male Vote, and The Concept of Irony with a Single Reference to Barack Obama

Over the span of the last 30 years, the Washington Post reported in November 2019, Trump’s name has been mentioned in over 300 rap songs, in most instances admiringly. On the heels of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, XXL, the popular American hip-hop magazine ran an article that listed twenty instances in which Trump had been “big-upped” by some of the industry’s leading rappers, including Nas, J. Cole, Lil Wayne, Raekwon, and Kendrick Lamar. The love was not lost. Not long ago Trump palled around with Russell Simmons, partied with Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, and participated in a celebrity filled video invitation to Sean Diddy Combs’ 1999 birthday party. More recently, Trump pardoned Lil Wayne from facing federal gun charges and commuted the sentences of Kodak Black for federal gun charges and Harry-O, founder of Death Row Records, for attempted murder and cocaine distribution. I find it highly unlikely that Deion Sanders and Snoop Dogg are the only Black men who feel a debt of gratitude to Trump for granting these presidential pardons.

This is all to say that given the decades long relationship between Trump and the world of hip-hop, and by extension the world of Black men, now that hip-hop is near universally considered to be the medium that authentically narrates all Black male strivings and desires, despite the best efforts of a dwindling remnant of us who reject the genre’s Weltanschauung and attendant structures of feeling, it should have come as no shock that an electorally significant percentage of Black men are poised to cast a vote for Donald Trump or are mulling it. 

For decades, Trump’s wealth, celebrity, and brashness have captured the imaginations of prominent hip-hop impresarios. For decades, leading hip-hop impresarios have captured the imaginations of millions of Black men. And Trump’s persona as a wealthy, hypermasculine, apex-predator strongman by day, and callous, womanizing playboy by night with unlimited access to disposable cash and disposable women seamlessly aligns with thousands of hip-hop singles, movies inspired by the genre, as well as numberless interviews and news reports starring hip-hop’s leading men.

But this is not to say that hip-hop invented the American archetype of the hypermasculine strongman or its dedicated partner, misogyny. It did not. And the attempt to position Black men to take the blame for a second Trump presidency would be risible if it weren’t already so disingenuous and the stakes of this election so high. Tinseltown has been projecting these images to American men for generations. The relatively new video gaming culture-industry has been playing around with these images for thirty years and counting. Many of the most popular male talk radio and podcast hosts talk incessantly about bringing back the days when men were men, read able to dominate women and other men as a badge of worthiness, among other activities. Money, power, celebrity, unlimited sexual access, brashness, flouting social norms—given the amount of American cultural machinery, across race, geographical region, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and socioeconomic status, and gender, lionizing men who exhibit these qualities, rather than be surprised that an electorally significant percentage of Black men are leaning towards Trump, we might do well to ask ourselves why it is the case that the number of Black men who are going to vote for Trump pales in comparison to other racial groupings of American men poised to vote for him.

Which brings me to Obama, our resident scold-in-chief, and his most recent scolding.

What stood out to me about his most recent scolding was not that he was scolding us again. More  of Obama’s political success is tied to acting as if he is a real-life Bulworth, constantly reprimanding Black folk and treating us as morally failing subjects in need of moral instruction rather than as political actors whose consent and approval he should be campaigning for than most are ready to fully admit. What stood to me was that one of the reasons he offered for why some Black men might be voting for Trump is their belief, shared by Trump, that degrading women is part and parcel of what it means to be a man. This criticism—Black men might be voting for Trump because they share his belief that degrading women makes one a man—levied by our country’s most conspicuous hip-hop connoisseur and lyrical sommelier whose most recent list of his five favorite rappers all routinely perform lyrics that degrade Black women? This criticism from the former President who counts among his closest friends Jay-Z of 99 problems, notwithstanding his  relatively recent, wanting, and breezy disavowals of the misogyny prominently featured in the very cultural artifacts that have garnered for him near universal acclaim? 

OK. Of all the criticisms Obama could have made, I didn’t see that one coming. And frankly, I have always found Obama’s passion for hip-hop to be incongruous with the politics of respectability and practices of self-regard that are his usual trade, even if often enough he confuses the two. Still, I found something about this criticism of Obama’s, given the relationship of hip-hop to Trump, and his to hip-hop, a bit rich to the point of being staggeringly ironic. Then again, to borrow the words of one of our country’s all-time most perceptive ironists: only in America. 

In the few weeks we have before we decide who will be the next President of the United States, rather than spending his time attempting to scold Black men into voting for Harris, former President Obama should spend his time making the case for how her potential presidency will demonstrably improve their present life and their futures. He should ask them for their vote rather than shame them into voting. In other words he should make the same thoughtful, policy-based appeals that he has routinely and skillfully made to other members and communities in our Republic.

And if he really wants to know why so many Black men find themselves attracted to Trump’s money, power, celebrity and misogyny, maybe he should ask his friend Jay-Z, or, at least, listen to the lyrics he loves so much more carefully.

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