Clark and Kucinich handlers claiming 'street cred' with the hip-hop crowd
Originally published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Clark and Kucinich handlers claiming 'street cred' with the hip-hop crowd
By DAVID HAMMER
Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Do Wesley Clark and Dennis Kucinich have street cred?
While nobody is surprised that the Rev. Al Sharpton can hang out with rap moguls Russell Simmons and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, satirists skewered white candidates for their pop-culture reach at a youth-oriented debate.
But young aides for Clark, a silver-haired retired general, and Kucinich, a diminutive middle-aged congressman, claim their candidates can have real cache with young voters -- in other words, street cred.
Clark spokeswoman Kym Spell said Clark particularly likes OutKast, Atlanta rappers with anti-war lyrics that parallel Clark's opposition to President Bush's Iraq policy.
Long before his tongue-in-cheek comment at the "Rock the Vote" debate Tuesday about OutKast members cutting solo albums, Clark was listening to their CDs on his campaign plane flights, Spell said.
Could the older, white politician who raps his message -- like the "Ghetto Superstar" portrayed by Warren Beatty in the 1998 film "Bulworth" -- be far behind?
"Not if we have anything to say about it," said Spell, who favors Frank Sinatra and calls herself "the oldest 31-year-old on the planet."
She said Clark has been known to bust a rhyme or two in private, but a group of young advisers he calls "my Mod Squad" usually tries to rein him in.
Kucinich spokesman David Swanson said his candidate is not about to start rapping, but respects the political reach of the genre, holding hip-hop summits and enlisting volunteers from the rap game.
James Eiseman, who teaches a course on politics and popular culture at Loyola University in New Orleans, said pop-culture references won't be taken as a pander if they're well-conceived.
"It's the same as when President Clinton played the saxophone" in the 1992 campaign, Eiseman said. "He appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show and related to what people who watched the show knew. You just have to be careful to use the references correctly."
Clinton broke the barrier between mainstream politics and rock music, but he had an uneasy relationship with the fathers of political rap, Public Enemy, after criticizing racially divisive lyrics by Sista Soulja.
The Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Kucinich's director of outreach to new voters, said identifying with hip-hop could still replicate the impact of Clinton's Arsenio appearance.
"But what is that impact?" he said. "Does it translate into public policy? Young people don't want anybody trying to look cool. They want someone who will respond to their concerns."
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