Earlier this week, Snoop Dogg appeared to respond to criticism over his performance at Trump’s Inaugural Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C. The iconic rapper and media personality took to his Instagram with a clip from inside his car where he says, “For all the hate, I’m gonna answer it with love. Y’all can’t hate enough on me. I love too much.” He went on to add, “Get your life right. Stop worrying about mine. I’m cool. I’m together. Still a Black man. Still 100% Black.”
Snoop wasn’t the only legendary hip-hop act facing backlash for performing during the President’s festivities. Nelly responded to criticisms over his performance at the Liberty Ball celebrating Trump’s inauguration. He told Geto Boys’ Willie D in an interview that, “I respect the office. This isn’t politics. Politics for me is over; [Trump] won, he’s the Commander-in-Chief.” Rappers were everywhere during those pre-inauguration parties. Soulja Boy also performed at the Crypto Ball, and Waka Flocka performed at a much-talked-about inauguration party hosted by conservative influencer CJ Pearson.
It’s a stark contrast from Trump’s first term, when open-faced resistance to his every move was more or less the norm within pop culture and when you couldn’t imagine anyone from the rap world signing up to do anything celebrating Trump. Snoop and Nelly are indeed just part of a broader shift that’s been in motion since before the election. There was Fivio Foreign and Kodak Black’s baffling Trump anthem, “ONBOA47RD,” drill rappers Sleepy Hallow and Sheff G’s appearance at a Trump rally in the Bronx, and Trump himself appearing on the popular streamer Adin Ross’ live stream. All suggest a kind of normalization that’s been taking shape in the years since Trump first left office. Whereas in 2020, galvanizing movements like the George Floyd protests put activism front and center within the culture, in the years since, a kind of political nihlism has been taking root.
Still, something intuitively feels off about a genre rooted in Black expression offering so little in terms of resistance to the current administration. Last year, writers Timmhotep Aku and Andre Gee asked if rap had indeed lost its revolutionary identity—or if it ever had one. The commercial forces that thrust hip-hop into the mainstream also made it a genre ripe for corporate co-opting. It’s how the NFL can use rap to help wash away its own sins when it comes to its treatment of Black players (and coaches) and why, increasingly, it seems like very few rappers are willing to step in front of their bottom line in order to say or do anything openly against President Trump.
Still, it’d be unfair to categorize every hip-hop act in 2025 as capitulating to Trump, and in fact, there are vibrant scenes in the underground where you’ll easily find the kind of radical energy that was present in the Nineties. However, when it comes to mainstream rap, it would appear Trump is simply the status quo, and rocking the boat is bad business.
In 2020, former President Barack Obama noted that many of Trump’s attributes fit the mold of modern hip-hop. The displays of wealth and opulence, as well as the hypermasculine displays of sexuality. “I have to remind myself that if you listen to rap music, it’s all about the bling, the women, the money,” he told The Atlantic. “A lot of rap videos are using the same measures of what it means to be successful as Donald Trump is. Everything is gold-plated. That insinuates itself and seeps into the culture.” He was rightly criticized for leaning on stereotypes about hip-hop, but all these years later, it’s hard not to acknowledge a kernel of truth to his assessment, and it’s true for the culture at large, not just hip-hop. Everywhere you look, it seems people are increasingly behaving like Donald Trump.
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