Rappers Who Ran For Office
Hip-Politics: Do You Remember When These Rappers Ran For Office?
Source: Paras Griffin / Stringer / Getty
In this day and age, there’s a thin line between having a voice and being political. Back in the day, Black artists used their platform to make changes invoke change and bring awareness to the oppressive environment that people of color were experiencing at the time. You know the famous Nina Simone quote, right: “You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”
With the rise of social media over the years, anybody with a tad bit of influence can spew their ideologies to the masses — whether their right or wrong. Take Kanye West for example. He use to voice of the people! Then he became a Trump supporting, republican, MAGA capitalist who apparently forgot about his days as kid coming up in Chicago.
He went so far as to claim that slavery was a choice and that “Liberals bully people who are Trump supporters! Blacks are 90% Democrats. That sounds like control to me.”
But on the flip side, you have good brothers like Killer Mike, who use their platform to uplift his people all across the world.
“I don’t accept ‘political rapper’ because I don’t give a damn about either political party. I give a damn about the people. My rap comes from a sociological standpoint rather than picking a particular side or dogma or ideology. I just want people to be free to do what they want, as long as they don’t harm others.” Killer Mike
With the current state of our Congress and the messiness that is the 2020 election, it would be dope to have a woke hip hopper be our new Head Of State. Hit the flip to refresh your memory on some of raps biggest names who took their talents to politics.
Hip-Politics: Do You Remember When These Rappers Ran For Office? was originally published on ioneglobalgrind.staging.go.ione.nyc
