Conference Agenda

In recent years, rapper Eminem has been vocal about his political allegiances. In 2017, just months after Donald Trump took office, Eminem appeared in a BET “Cypher,” a freestyle rap session where emcees show off their skills, and used the entirety of his allotted time to accuse President Trump of being a cowardly racist who represented an immediate threat to the American people. Less than three months ago, Eminem took the stage again, this time at a Detroit rally in support of Kamala Harris. He once again called out Trump as a threat to the country and introduced former president Barack Obama, who began his speech by rapping lyrics from one of Eminem’s most famous songs, “Lose Yourself.” Despite Eminem’s stated support for Democratic candidates and his rejection of Trump, the white rapper also has been claimed by Republican politicians including Marco Rubio and Vivek Ramaswamy. In fact, early in his career, Eminem branded himself as a politically incorrect provocateur. By emphasizing contradictions in whiteness, particularly with respect to class, Eminem’s early commercial recordings, along with his semi-autobiographical 2002 film 8 Mile, cast him as an angry underdog. Thus, despite his recent efforts to position himself firmly in opposition to Donald Trump, much of Eminem’s early work aligns well with the cultural logic of conservative grievance politics. This paper explores these contradictions and examines how Eminem’s music and legacy remain open to being adopted by both Democrats and Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign. How do Barack Obama and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom chose to rap the opening lines of “Lose Yourself” at different campaign events, draw on hip hop history to bolster their respective positions? What does Eminem’s relevance twenty-five years after his mainstream debut tell us about hip hop’s political evolution? And, finally, what can hip hop teach us about recent trends in electoral politics that have seen more people of color, especially young men, identifying with the GOP?

Kanye West’s political evolution—from his early critiques of anti-Black state violence to his embrace of Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, and far-right ideology—poses a critical challenge to dominant narratives about hip-hop’s relationship to progressive politics. While West’s shift has often been framed as a personal unraveling, this paper situates his transformation within a broader conservative strategy that uses pop culture, religion, and celebrity to rebrand right-wing politics. West’s fusion of prosperity gospel, evangelical conservatism, and political reaction highlights how religious rhetoric has been mobilized to advance narratives of personal redemption, economic individualism, and racial hierarchy—core tenets of contemporary right-wing ideology. More broadly, his trajectory reflects a strategic effort by the right to co-opt figures from historically progressive cultural spaces, using their platforms to challenge mainstream narratives on race, democracy, and power. By analyzing the intersections of race, religion, and spectacle in West’s political turn, this paper explores the shifting cultural dynamics that have allowed conservative movements to find resonance within hip-hop and other entertainment industries, reshaping the political landscape in the process.

Focusing on the use of rap to engage in seemingly inconspicuous uses of caricature and cliché to reinforce erroneous beliefs about (mostly) Black Americans is a specific version stereotyping more easily understood by thinking of it as “rapwashing.” It’s like whitewashing or greenwashing, only it’s done with rap music. In media, rapwashing often manifests as narratives that justify inconvenient deaths--often a Black person whose death is reported by referencing the victim's relationship to hip hop, as if this fact somehow justifies or explains their death.

An early, classic example of rapwashing is the news coverage of the violence that broke out during a 1986 Long Beach, California concert featuring Run-DMC, Whodini, and LL Cool J. The rappers denied the violence had anything to do with their music, which actually “contained anti-violence themes.” The Associated Press headline read, “Violence erupts at rap concert.” The United Press International headline was more definitive: “Violence plagues rap concerts.” Others put the word “rap,” “rap band,” or “rap musician” in scare quotes to emphasize what, exactly, people should fear.

In recent years, however, as rap music's economic and cultural power has grown, another form of rapwashing has emerged. In 2022, the NFL put on their hip-hop halftime show. Their presentation of a mostly Black performance lineup could suggest a commitment to racial justice and solidarity with no need for proof of such a commitment other than the spectacle of performance. That this hip-hop performance happened against the backdrop of the NFL’s storied anti-Blackness, including the controvery surrounding quarterback Colin Kapernick's onfield protests of police violence against Black people, makes the rapwashing clearer. Jay-Z’s RocNation and the NFL’s “Inspire Change” initiative worked together, using hip hop to launder the image of the football league.

This presentation explores the evolution of rapwashing and its contemporary uses at a time when U.S. politics has taken a hard turn towards the right. How is contemporary rap music accountable to contemporary politics? How are conservative forces using hip hop to put forward a politics of race?