If there are as many young people voting in the upcoming election as there are organizations and news reports about efforts to get young people to vote, then that will be something.
I think the key to the whole campaign can be summed up in this quote from Russell Simmons: "We want people to feel like if you don't vote you're an idiot." If they can do that, they might make some progress. Here's another story on the subject:
- P. Diddy is just the latest rap figure this year to try and make voting cool to a hip-hop generation that Combs has dubbed "the forgotten ones."
Russell Simmons brought his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network to the Democratic National Convention in Boston on Monday. About 2,000 people turned out as stars such as Wyclef Jean, Loon, Lloyd Banks and Bone Crusher urged them to register to vote.
The muzzled mouth of OutKast's Andre 3000, who also was present at the Boston event, is adorning new public service ads by the nonpartisan group Declare Yourself, with the motto: "Only You Can Silence Yourself." And Jadakiss, who raps about drug dealing, violence and other thuggery in his lyrics, is raising political issues in his new song "Why" and giving interviews about voting and getting the minimum wage raised.
"This is the collective conscious of hip-hop at work," said hip-hop mogul Simmons, who over the past three years has enlisted superstars like Jay-Z, Beyonce, Eminem, Nelly and Ludacris as his group registered thousands of young black and Latino fans to vote.
"It's a cultural snowball effect. We want people to feel like if you don't vote you're an idiot," he told The Associated Press
....There have been past efforts to get out the hip-hop vote. During the 2000 election, Rap the Vote, an offshoot of the group Rock the Vote, used Mary J. Blige, P. Diddy, Queen Latifah and others to generate voter turnout among black and minority youth.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments