The scene is Des Moines, Iowa, earlier this month. Up on stage is a man running to be the Republican party’s next pick for US president. A song starts over the tannoy. It is one of the hopeful’s declared favourites. Pumping the air, he lifts the mic and begins rapping along: “You better lose yourself in the music / The moment, you own it, you better never let it go.”
So goes one of the best-known songs of the 21st century – and one of the most bizarre moments so far in the Republican primaries. Why is Vivek Ramaswamy – with an estimated net worth somewhere north of $950m – karaoke-ing about life in a mobile home? What does a product of Yale and Harvard know about having to wear a sweater coated with vomit (“mom’s spaghetti”)?
Such questions clearly troubled Lose Yourself’s author, Eminem, who last week fired off a lawyer’s letter demanding that the politician stop using any of his work. Just as the song foretold, Mr Ramaswamy only got one shot – sadly for him.
Politicians have tangled with pop for decades – just think of Harold Wilson’s canny award of MBEs to the Fab Four – yet in recent years, real political contenders have had to pretend that they actually listen to the stuff. Picking her Desert Island Discs in 1978, Margaret Thatcher thought she would subsist on a diet of Beethoven and Dvořák. Three decades later, Gordon Brown was asked whether he liked Arctic Monkeys and tried a cheery bluff about how they’d “certainly wake you up in the morning”.
As the then chancellor later admitted, he’d never heard the band, let alone sluiced cider down his jumper to I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor. But he was right to observe that, from Strictly to the Lionesses, “Unless you can offer a view on each and every issue of the day, you are immediately accused of indecisiveness.” As mass-membership parties have withered away, so modern politicians must show that they are one of us through a feigned enthusiasm for popular culture – even though it has nothing to do with their job.
In a few weeks, Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, turns 51. He ranks among the most talented performers in hip-hop, an art form that has marked its own 50th birthday this month. Both are a good sight older than 38-year-old Mr Ramaswamy, and are soaked into our daily lives to an extent that politicians can only dream of. Lose Yourself has soundtracked countless gym sessions, an advert for Chrysler and a campaign by Joe Biden. Its author may hate the politics of Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes, but artists can’t choose their fans.
Yet it is odd to see a venture capitalist such as Mr Ramaswamy act the underdog; or to hear Old Etonian David Cameron proclaim his love for The Eton Rifles by the Jam. Part of how this era of supersized inequality persists is by the people at the top pretending they’re just like those at the bottom. Why, they even listen to the same music! The boss of Goldman Sachs is a DJ, and our very own prime minister enjoys rap. Although, being Rishi Sunak, he knows all the words to that 90s embarrassment Ice Ice Baby. Give us Eminem any day.
