The Nation on Sunday posted an Adam Howard analysis of the patterns of Hip-Hop culture when it comes to voting in elections. With groups such as the League of Pissed Off Voters, Puff Daddy’s Citizen Change network and recent actions such as Kanye West, the most popular rap artist of the moment, calling for an end to gay-bashing in the hip-hop culture, this movement could become increasingly influential with the growing non-white voting population.
According to the League, African-Americans and Latinos accounted for more than half of the new voters aged 18 to 29 in 2004. There were certainly many factors that contributed to the increase, such as the Florida debacle in 2000 and the simple demographic increase in young voters. However, the political influence of hip-hop moguls such as Combs and Russell Simmons, as well as other rap stars engaged in registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, was undeniable. Massive registration drives, marketing campaigns and even music videos by the likes of Eminem and Jadakiss all helped create a heightened awareness of the importance of voting in young communities of color.
While Simmons’s Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), Combs’s Citizen Change and the nearly dozen other hip-hop-affiliated activist groups have always been officially nonpartisan, their supporters were overwhelmingly anti-Bush, which had a lot to do with their success in the last election. The consensus among the behind-the-scenes hip-hop activists is that, although John Kerry lost, youth voting-drive efforts showed the potential of organizing young people around electoral goals and pointed the way forward to a time when the mobilization of new young voters could equal the Christian right’s grassroots efforts.
Popularity: unranked [?]