The Obama Campaign touts one of its most famous supporters.
Ari Melber
President Barack Obama has touted hip hop endorsements more than any other candidate on the national stage. His campaign doubled down on that strategy Monday, launching a flashy ad touting Jay-Z, the rapper, business mogul and former drug dealer, as the embodiment of the American dream.
“The idea of America is that no matter who you are, what you look like, or where you come from, you can make it if you try,” says Obama, adding, “Jay-Z did.”
The ad shows Jay-Z, clad in a black suit and a tie, talking somberly about how many people’s voices have been “silenced” in the political process, either because they were prevented from voting or because they “didn’t believe their voice mattered.”
“Now people are exercising their right,” Jay-Z continues, “and you are starting to see the power of our vote.”
President Obama’s lines in the ad were from a recording made for “Jay-Z’s Made in America Festival in Philadelphia on September 1st,” an Obama aide told The Nation. While the video is not running as a TV ad, it could draw significant attention online, especially from young voters and African-Americans.
In 2008, the Obama campaign distributed several Jay-Z videos that went viral, including footage of Jay-Z’s poem about the legacy of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Obama himself; a clip of then-Senator Obama using Jay’s signature hand gesture to dismiss political attacks by figuratively brushing them off his shoulders; and a state-level briefing on voter-ID rules for Michigan residents. The Obama campaign has adeptly used YouTube and social networks as a relatively thrifty way to do targeted messaging. TV ads are great for broadcasting, but voter turnout is about narrow-casting. And not all messengers are created equal.
“Jay is an anomaly to an incredible degree,” says Chuck Creekmur, CEO of AllHipHop.com. “He’s a great example of a possibility that is very difficult to attain for most kids from Marcy Projects,” says Creekmur, who has covered Jay and Obama’s outreach to the hip hop community. “I’d like to see more messaging directly referencing the issues that affect the 90 percent of African-Americans who voted for Obama,” he told The Nation.
The Obama campaign is not limiting Jay-Z’s voice to mobilizing the grassroots, of course. He and his wife Beyoncé recently headlined a $4 million fundraiser for Obama in Manhattan.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.