Friday Roundup: MAGA is Using Drake and other Rap Artists for Digital Propaganda
Despite Drake's attempt to distance himself from ICE, they're "flooding the zone" with his art.
Last July, Journalist Ivie Ani observed that Drake’s “ICEMAN branding…is certainly a choice in this political climate.” She linked Drake’s album title and the ICEMAN truck he drove during his first promo livestream to the Immigration and Customs & Enforcement (ICE) agency. When President Donald Trump began his second term, he ramped up countrywide immigration raids, with shoddily trained ICE agents accosting people off the street to warehouse them in detention centers. Despite them murdering people and letting detainees die at their centers, the administration’s digital footprint propagandizes ICE as do-gooders ridding the country of undesirables. So while “Iceman” is a fairly common nickname, it also felt like awkward timing.
Drake stans and other detractors surmised she was “reaching.” But a year later, the Trump administration has proven her instincts right by using the Toronto artist’s latest album as a goldmine for digital content.
The night after Drake released his album trifecta, the White House posted a doctored version of the ICEMAN album cover with Drake’s hand holding an iced-out MAGA chain. They then posted a TikTok video with the caption “Iceman 🥶,” interspersing clips of Trump and ICE officers accosting people with ICEMAN’s “Make Them Know” playing in the background. Their next video, on the same day, showed off Trump’s Oval Office upgrades with audio from Drake’s “Family Matters” diss to Kendrick Lamar. On Monday, they used the “like this” audio clip from Maid Of Honor’s “Hoe Phase” in a clip juxtaposing former president Joe Biden and Trump. And on Wednesday, they released another TikTok clip crowning Trump as “the GOAT” while “Shabang” played in the background.
That’s an album cover and four songs that MAGA has used for four clips. A quick scroll through their page shows them using other hip-hop songs: “Fast Life Yungsta’s “Swag Surf” and TI’s “Swagger Like Us,” to romanticize Trump’s “swagger” (welcome back 2011), “What You Saying” by Lil Uzi Vert, “We Go On,” by Bia, and Chamillionaire’s “Ridin Dirty” during a clip of his motorcade. Another clip stitches Marco Rubio saying “if you don’t know, now you know” with Biggie’s “Hypnotize” — the Brooklyn great doesn’t even use that phrase on that song. We could only imagine that the White House’s digital marketing team is a bunch of tech bros who splice these clips together in between watching Pardon My Take, placing parlays, and pounding Happy Dad beers.
It would behoove these artists, and Biggie’s estate, to come out against Trump using their music ala Beyonce, SZA, and Sabrina Carpenter. To this point, Drake has said nothing about the clips. Drake has a history of calling out the President. He said “fuck” Trump in 2017, and also called him a “fuckin idiot” in 2018. And on ICEMAN’s “Ran To Atlanta,” he rapped, “when I tell you dip cause it’s Ice time, bitch it ain’t the fake feds.” It was Drake’s way of preemptively distancing the album from any association with ICE. But MAGA’s digital onslaught still rode his wave.
Pop culture discourse is like a stock market, and a bad Q rating means people will believe pretty much anything about you. Even if he’s made his stance clear in the past, Drake’s polarizing reputation and manosphere associations now influence people to assume the worst about him. He’s called manosphere streamer Adin Ross, a Trump supporter who interviewed the President, his “brother.” He’s the chief endorser for gambling company Stake, who last month donated $1 million to a pro-Trump Super PAC — perhaps seeking leniency in a RICO racketeering complaint that involves Drake. It’s unclear how close Drake and Akademiks actually are, having only met once, but his top envoy is also a Trump supporter. When media personality Jeremy Hecht called for Drake to denounce the clips, Akademiks kindly pushed back:
“Shut yo b***h a** up…talking bout a rapper need to ‘denounce’ free promo from the f***ing White House. I’m so glad n***as like u is outta here. Ain’t no denouncing f**k n***a .. take dat woke s**t back to the f***ing dot era! It’s iceman szn.”
Akademiks branded “ICEMAN season” as a coronation for Drake and an “anti-Woke” cleansing. It’s unclear if Drake co-signs Akademiks’ stance, but again, his associations and creative decisions have dragged him into the morass.
Numerous ICEMAN reviews have surmised that Drake is “flooding the zone” with his deluge of recent releases. The term is derived from MAGA world’s scheme of courting constant headlines to distract and overwhelm the public. “The Democrats don’t matter... The real opposition is the media,” Steve Bannon told writer Michael Lewis. And Drake’s political affiliation doesn’t matter to Trump’s digital strategists. Even if he’s said “fuck Trump” before, MAGA has already decided to take advantage of an album title that sounds too close to their veritable fourth Reich. And now, like it or not, both he and MAGA are flooding the zone together.
Other Thoughts
Spotify and UMG come to an agreement for users to create AI-generated remixes. Who the hell is going to listen to an AI-generated remix of a song besides the remixer? This comes after Spotify announced that they would be putting a badge to verify human artists — but if you have less than 10,000 active listeners over a three-month period, you’re not eligible. It just feels like the artist, the main reason anyone is purchasing Spotify, keeps getting the short end of the stick with every decision they make. Also, I’m curious if this has any bearing on Bill Ackman’s $64 million bid to buy UMG.
Jeremy Hecht suggests DJ Akademiks is being funded by Truth Social. That would make a lot of sense, because he’s unabashedly conservative and has zero shame. I feel like a lot of prominent rap accounts are funded by Republicans. They post so much debased content, and frame many of Trump’s actions in a wholly uncritical way.
Is Vince Staples about to drop a rock album? A fan who was allegedly at rehearsals for Vince’s Cry Baby album says that “no question that this is a rock album.” Vince has always been musically ambitious. I’m really curious to see where he goes thematically over those kinds of sonics. Based on “Blackberry Marmalade,” it feels like he’s going for wider social commentary we need.