Trump courts rappers as surrogates for his campaign to win more voters of color
As Trump courts young voters of color, his campaign is turning rap stars into surrogates, pursuing nationally renowned names and smaller acts prominent locally.
At Donald Trump’s Black voter outreach event at a Detroit church last weekend, the church’s pastor and several prominent Black Republicans joined the former president onstage. So did another unlikelier figure: rapper Casada Sorrell, better known as Sada Baby.
Most Republican voters may not be familiar with Sada Baby, but there’s a good chance their kids are. In 2020, he went viral with his single “Whole Lotta Choppas,” a pandemic mainstay on TikTok that was among the first viral records on the app.
Years later, he sat onstage inches from Trump and said, “He might be the first person to make me vote,” fueled in part by the mere fact that Trump’s team reached out to him.
“Him reaching out showed me, like, some type of effort that another candidate hadn’t shown ever,” Sorrell said, noting that Trump could have pursued a bigger Detroit name like rapper Eminem (a notorious critic of him). “I’m trying to act like it doesn’t mean too much, but it means a lot.”
And it’s not a one-off move. As Trump works to court young voters of color, one strategy his campaign has pursued is to turn rap stars into surrogates, pursuing not only nationally renowned names but also smaller acts prominent in their local communities.
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