GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tried himself as a rapper when in Harvard and still claims to admire Marshall.
A philosophical leader of what he dubs the “anti-woke” movement, New York Times bestselling author and wealthy biotech entrepreneur says that he sees himself in Marshall’s struggles and wants to use his music on the walk-out playlist during the upcoming presidential campaign. Ramaswamy talked about it during his recent interview: “I saw myself, honestly, making it big through American capitalism, and that’s why the Eminem story spoke to me. He’s growing up in the trailers, with a single mom, and he wants to make it. He’s going to use the moment to do it. He feels like he’s going to use the moment to do it, he seizes it and then he makes it happen, and I thought it was a pretty cool story. I didn’t grow up in a trailer, but I also didn’t grow up in the same circumstances that most of my peers at Harvard did, either. I aspired to achieve what many of their parents did. It kind of spoke to me, I would say”.
Ramaswamy didn’t grow up with a single mom. His father was an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, his mother a geriatric psychiatrist. But Marshall’s charisma, focus, and success certainly looked attractive for a young Harvardian with big ambitions. So Ramaswamy created an alter ego Da Vek and became a regular at Harvard open-mic nights, where he often rapped “Lose Yourself”. He also experimented with his own lyrics, but it’s “Lose Yourself” that he kept bringing up at student events and, later, at the holiday parties of his own asset management firm. The friend of a politician characterises the performance with a phrase, “It’s not as cringe as you might think”.
Politico got a hold on the footage from Ramaswamy’s students years, when he used to perform publicly, so you can make your own opinion on the quality of his delivery.
The Politico reporter notes that that “gig was an early sign of the extroverted, self-assured personality that has propelled him far further in the primary than virtually anyone expected”. A subtle way to say that his confidence outweighed any of his other skills and somehow it still worked.
Eminem’s strong anti-republican stance is well-known and documented even by the Secret Service that investigated Marshall because of his radical political lyrics. Em has never tied to hide it and famously eviscerated Trump and his political views in “Storm”, the BET Hip Hop Awards freestyle of 2017. Eminem campaigned for election participation and allowed the Democratic Party to use his music in their promotional campaign, but it is impossible to imagine him lending his songs to the GOP. However, republicans do not always as vigilant about property rights when it is them who exploit them. Trump, for one, kept using hits of The Village People, Adele, Pharrell, Rihanna, and many more despite their direct objections.
