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Sexyy Red made headlines this week after professing her love for Donald Trump on a conservative-leaning podcast. It may seem trivial, but there's reason for Democrats to take note.
“I like Trump,” the rapper, born Janae Wherry, told podcast host Theo Von on "This Past Weekend."
“Yeah, they support him in the hood,” she continued. “At first I don’t think people was f------ with him. They thought he was racist, saying little s--- against women.”
She added: “But once he started getting Black people out of jail and giving people that free money, aww baby, we love Trump. We need him back in office. We need him back because, baby, them checks. Them stimulus checks. Trump, we miss you.”
Conservatives online are cheering as though they've won the Super Bowl.
If it weren’t abundantly clear already, Sexyy Red doesn’t speak for the whole, or anywhere near, the majority of Black America. Data abounds that so-called hoods across America do not, in fact, rock with Trump. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters appear to think a smattering of rappers suggesting otherwise will improve his support among Black folks.
So I think it’s more worthwhile to discuss the platform on which Sexyy Red’s comments were made rather than the comments themselves, which come from an unreliable source.
The rapper made her remarks on a podcast hosted by someone who traffics in the conservative media ecosystem and is a frequent guest on Joe Rogan’s conspiratorial podcast.
Von has welcomed onto his show guests such as Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator; Roseanne Barr, the actor/comedian who has come under fire for racist and antisemitic comments; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine misinformation peddler and 2024 presidential candidate.
Precisely how Sexyy Red was booked on this show is unclear to me. But it speaks to a trend I’ve noticed as of late: white conservative podcasters using hip-hop culture — or Black rappers themselves — seemingly to broach and banter over conservative ideals. Because some participants in these conversations are Black and tend to be covered by ostensibly Black media, many of these interviews are often clipped and distributed to Black netizens without any acknowledgment of the platforms from which they originated. But, particularly in the lead-up to the 2024 election, right-wingers continue to use rappers and rap culture as vehicles to spread their messaging to the Black masses.
There's "No Jumper," a hip-hop-oriented podcast platform helmed by Adam Grandmaison, a white man who goes by Adam22. Grandmaison has welcomed rappers, as well as white nationalists and neo-Nazis, onto his platform.
There's also rapper Ice Cube, a popular target for conservative media figures who’s been known to espouse right-wing conspiracy theories in the past. He sat down for an extended interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was distributed on social media in July. And in May he sat for an interview on the podcast "Full Send," a right-leaning podcast hosted by a group of men who call themselves the Nelk Boys.
The group has welcomed several other rappers onto their podcast, and they’re described in The Nation as the "YouTube Bros Who Might Help Trump Win in 2024.”
Now, some tempering is in order. I’ve been Black long enough to know, with certainty, that rappers don’t speak for the community in any broad sense. So, to the extent there may be a clear political motive behind these interviews, I think it’s premised on a very stupid, very racist assumption of from whom Black people get their political guidance.
But I think these instances deserve public attention. I’ve written about the ostensibly Black platforms that push right-wing propaganda. It appears we’re also seeing a proliferation of white-run platforms that are using Black rappers to do the same thing.
As the saying goes: Stay woke, y'all.