THEY SEE ME TROLLIN', THEY HATIN'.
By the way, that guy at the American Enterprise Institute is still doing his "Greatest Conservative Rap Songs of All Time" thing. Second installment is "Keep Ya Head Up," because Tupac "attacks contemporary feminist beliefs, decries single-parent families, and calls on men, particularly those in his own African-American community, to step up and take responsibility." Also, "he expresses his hope that a return to traditional values will mean that 'things are gonna get easier' and 'things’ll get brighter.'" Ooh-ooh chile, that's some good rightwing rap. Third installment is "Role Model," because Eminem calls Hillary Clinton a bitch.
I don't know whether AEI's in on the joke or not, but if he's actually getting paid for this, that's so banksta.
UPDATE. Commenter mortimer informs me that the guy has done a new one. I agree with mortimer that the passage he quotes can't be improved upon:
Near the end of the song, all this culminates in a warning to wannabe revolutionaries everywhere: “Dr. Dre be the name / Still running the game.” And this extends, of course, to those who believe that a Marxist utopia can be established through democratically endorsed redistribution of wealth. As Dr. Young explains in “Forgot About Dre,” a song from his next album: “If it was up to me / You motherf****** would stop coming up to me / With your hands out lookin’ up to me / Like you want something free.”
But the best is the guy's exegesis on the Brazilian "Rap das Armas." Looking for joints repping "principled defense of Second Amendment rights," he can't get with popular American numbers like "Cop Killer," as they show a "thirst for wanton machismo," so he picks up this foreign one, which he says "finds its ultimate justification in self-defense against totalitarian government" as it "describes a neighborhood ready to resist." As always, gun nuts find the prospect of fighting the totalitarian police appealing unless black Americans are doing it, in which case it's just pathology.
I feel a Poe's Law warrant coming on.
UPDATE 2. The rightwing rap craze continues! Meet Florida GOP Rep. Trey Radel:
The first [song that represents my views on Washington] that I would have to refer to would be 'Fight the Power,' by Public Enemy. This is a song that... if you really get down to it, reflects the conservative message of having a heavy handed federal government... Chuck D of Public Enemy and I may disagree on certain philosophies of government, but I think at the end of the day— and this is where I take my love of hip hop music— where there have been issues and problems with either heavy handed law enforcement... or heavy handed government itself.
Amanda teases him mercilessly. At least Radel's bullshit makes some kind of real-world sense, though: He's a politician trying to put himself over as a Regular Bro, and acquaintance with one of the 10 or 12 hiphop records all white people know is a definite bro signifier. And his bro-babble shows in its most common and primitive state the childish impulse to claim all the things you like in life -- cool tunes, great movies, choc-a-mut ice creams -- for some stupid ideology.
The Zhdanovism is depressing, though at present I think these guys have as much hope of colonizing rap as Jonah Goldberg has of winning a decathlon.