A quick scooch around the news and you'd be forgiven for thinking we truly do have the first hip-hop president in US history. The US rap fraternity have been imagining a better world since they first picked up their mics. But will Obama be the president they really want?
Rapping pioneer Kurtis Blow struck some conscious notes in his 1985 classic If I Ruled The World, addressing the woes of the working class such as crime, hunger and poverty. We're not sure if Obama's middle-class tax breaks will please Mr Blow, but as he also promised his minions, a "super dinner party", we'll keep an eye on White House catering too.
Grandmaster Melle Mel was so enamoured of the idea of a black president he recorded Jesse to boost Jesse Jackson's ill-fated run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. "The people ain't black but the house is white/And just because I'm different they don't treat me right," he says in a song that doesn't quite live in the memory like White Lines (Don't Do It).
Rakim - considered by many the greatest rapper of all time - didn't even bother to keep hope alive, he just pretended that his erstwhile DJ was already leader of the free world by recording the epochal Eric B Is President in 1987. Fellow New Yorker Tragedy Khadafi recorded an incendiary blast called Arrest the President in 1990, which we assume was aimed at George Bush Senior rather than Eric B.
It wasn't until Dubya was voted in that rap really found its ire again, politically active rappers Dead Prez and Immortal Technique teaming up to record Impeach the President and Kanye West pointing out that George Bush didn't "care about black people". Once the long 2008 presidential campaign kicked off back in 2006, they weren't slow to stick their heads above the parapet. Nas went so far as to sample Obama for his Black President track which called for an end to police harassment. He'll be happy to know that there are rumours that Obama will soon move to end racial profiling.
Others don't look so prescient. That Nas track was built around a vocal sample of the late Tupac saying, "Although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black president", taken from his 1998 track Changes. Public Enemy's Chuck D said he felt Obama would be a great vice president to Hillary Clinton, while 50 Cent told reporters America wasn't ready for a black president yet. Ludacris felt it was, and his Obama Is Here even boasted: "He said I handle my biz and I'm one of his favourite rappers/Well give Luda a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer." But he called Hillary Clinton a "bitch" and Bush "mentally handicapped" in the same track, and Obama once told a campaign rally he wasn't inspired by rap artists who "degraded their sisters" or referenced "bitches" and "hos".
Many in the rap world might feel Obama won't push policy far enough, but whether they consider him black or mixed race, he's black enough for most of them. Let's leave the final word to Young Jeezy, who released this Mystic Meg-busting classic back in September: "My president is black, my Lambo's blue, and I'll be god damned if my rims ain't too..."
