At Donald Trump’s Black voter outreach event at a Detroit church last weekend, the church’s pastor and several prominent Black Republicans joined the former president onstage. So did another unlikelier figure: rapper Casada Sorrell, better known as Sada Baby.
Most Republican voters may not be familiar with Sada Baby, but there’s a good chance their kids are. In 2020, he went viral with his single “Whole Lotta Choppas,” a pandemic mainstay on TikTok that was among the first viral records on the app.
Years later, he sat onstage inches from Trump and said, “He might be the first person to make me vote,” fueled in part by the mere fact that Trump’s team reached out to him.
“Him reaching out showed me, like, some type of effort that another candidate hadn’t shown ever,” Sorrell said, noting that Trump could have pursued a bigger Detroit name like rapper Eminem (a notorious critic of him). “I’m trying to act like it doesn’t mean too much, but it means a lot.”
And it’s not a one-off move. As Trump works to court young voters of color, one strategy his campaign has pursued is to turn rap stars into surrogates, pursuing not only nationally renowned names but also smaller acts prominent in their local communities.
The campaign hopes the outreach will create a permission structure for undecided voters in communities with little history of supporting Republicans to at least consider Trump’s message. And Trump is embracing rappers — and they are embracing him — as polling data suggests this election may feature a generational split among Black voters, with younger members of the community showing much more openness to Trump.
Icewear Vezzo, another Detroit-based rapper who was at Trump’s event in Michigan, encouraged his fans to consider Trump after having gotten backlash for posing with him after the roundtable discussion.
“Why can’t we respectfully disagree no more,” Vezzo said in a post to his 1 million Instagram followers. “You know what’s built great companies and great civilizations? They all went and got a team of people who think differently from them.”
During Trump’s rally in the Bronx, New York, in the waning days of his criminal hush money trial, he brought onstage Brooklyn rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, both mainstays in New York’s increasingly influential drill scene. The week before, they were both charged in a 140-count indictment in Brooklyn that accused a group of “allegedly committing shootings, possessing guns, and using stolen cars during shootings, to eliminate” rival gang members.
“One thing I want to say is they always going to whisper your accomplishments and shout your failures. Trump is going to shout the wins for all of us,” said Sheff G, whose real name is Michael Williams.
Tegan Chambers (aka Sleepy Hallow) delivered a single line when he was asked to speak: “Make America Great Again.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign called Trump’s engagement with the rap community “completely organic,” saying the message resonates with the artists because they’re unhappy with President Joe Biden’s immigration and economic policies.
“While Joe Biden gaslights Black voters with nonsense ads, empty promises, and unrelatable messaging, President Trump is showing up in these communities and listening to the leaders within them, including rappers, pastors, and business leaders,” said Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director.
The Biden campaign suggested in a statement that Trump’s embrace of rappers does little to counter what it framed as a track record of “disrespecting Black communities every chance he gets.”
“It’s why the first thing he did after taking over the RNC was shut down its minority outreach centers, and it’s why his campaign keeps staging their so-called ‘outreach’ in white neighborhoods and in front of white audiences. Our campaign is on the ground engaging with our communities on the issues that matter, while President Biden is showing up — himself — to earn Black Americans’ support,” Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
The Biden campaign hasn’t reached out to rappers to the same degree, instead prioritizing access for Black media outlets like The Shade Room and doling out interviews to roughly two dozen Black radio programs this election cycle.
Vice President Kamala Harris took part Tuesday in a gun violence prevention event hosted by Atlanta-based rapper Quavo, following up on a White House meeting she had with him back in September. Quavo has yet to formally endorse the Biden-Harris campaign.
But though it’s not actively seeking rappers’ endorsements, the Biden campaign notes it is making a play for voters through its presence at several events centered on Black music and culture, including J. Cole’s Dreamville Fest in North Carolina and Usher’s Lovers & Friends Fest in Las Vegas.
The specifics pulling Trump and notable rappers together
Trump’s reputational redemption from some rap artists has been fueled in part by praise he received for his handling of criminal justice matters.
Rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black became vocal supporters of Trump after he included both in his list of 143 pardons and commutations in the final hours of his term in 2021.
“I want to thank President Trump for recognizing that I have so much more to give to my family, my art, and my community,” Lil Wayne said on what was then called Twitter a day after Biden’s inauguration.
The First Step Act, the most significant federal criminal justice reform in this century, which Trump signed into law in 2018, has also been praised for shortening prison time for some nonviolent offenders and implementing sentencing reforms. It’s among the reasons Billboard chart-topping rapper Sexyy Red cited for her support of Trump.
“I like Trump,” Sexyy Red said in an interview with comedian Theo Von. “Once he started getting Black people out of jail and giving people that free money. Aw baby, we love Trump. We need him back in office.”
As Red alluded to, Trump has been praised for the stimulus funds his administration gave to tens of millions of people during the Covid-19 pandemic under the Paycheck Protection Program, with his name printed on the fronts of paper checks mailed across the country.
“The Black community was not f------ with Trump, but when that PPP and all that came out, Black people forgave him,” West Coast rapper YG said, nearly eight years after he released a diss track protesting Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Rapper 50 Cent, during a visit to Capitol Hill in which he met with Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, told reporters he sees Black men “identifying with Trump” because “they got RICO charges [too].” That belief has been perpetuated by Trump and shared by some of his Black supporters, as well.
Emmuel Brown, 77, a Detroit resident who attended Trump's recent event there, said that “there are a lot of Black men that have been in trouble, so they can identify” with Trump.
But other voters are turned off by Trump’s claim that Black people find him more favorable because of his criminal cases. A majority of participants in an NBC News focus group of undecided Black voters in North Carolina called the assertion racist.
“It’s like an insult,” said Kelli P., 38, a participant from Jacksonville, North Carolina. “Are you serious? That’s what you think of us?”
Can rappers turn out voters?
Some critics have downplayed the significance of Trump’s embrace of rappers, noting that he boasted endorsements in 2020 from the likes of legacy acts like Kanye West and younger acts like the then-viral Lil Pump — but didn’t get a substantial increase in support from Black voters compared to 2016.
To some voters in battleground states, though, the rappers’ support is a reminder of the prominence Trump once held in hip-hop, when he was highly regarded as an aspirational figure regularly name-dropped in records.
“Growing up, I listened to 50 Cent. I used to hear Donald Trump on the mix tapes,” said Emani L., 32, a Georgia resident who declined to give his last name. “To have a president that used to be in the hood clubbing with people that come from where I come from? C’mon, man. C’mon.”
Mansa King, a sociologist who studies racial inequality, said using rappers as surrogates could capture the attention of a diverse coalition of younger voters, noting that “rappers appeal beyond the Black demographic.”
But King also highlighted a challenge Trump’s campaign may face in using culturally relevant entertainers to galvanize younger voters.
“Young people can be very excited about someone but not translate that into what’s needed to actually affect electoral behavior at the most important levels,” King said. “Getting folks to actually translate their enthusiasm or support for a candidate into actually registering and going to the polls on Election Day is a whole different bag of chips.”
But if Trump’s appeal to entertainers increases his support among voters of color by even a few percentage points, it could have a big effect in a close election.
“I can’t just dismiss it,” King said. “I don’t think he needs to get a majority of the votes. I think he simply needs to break off a significant enough minority of the votes. And I could see that possibly happening through this sort of simplistic strategy.”
