Off the record: It’s the hip-hop President

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The President’s man: Sean 'Diddy' Combs at a rally for Barack Obama in Miam

Taking the rap: new President-elect Barack Obama

For once, a major event has happened in American culture and the music world isn't waiting to hear what Bruce Springsteen thinks about it. Barack Obama hasn't just changed the face of US politics, he's changed its soundtrack too.

Hip-hop has been cheerleading for Obama since he was far from the favourite for the presidency. Rappers Common and Talib Kweli both namechecked him in songs as far back as mid-2007. In August last year the candidate, a more appropriate cover star for Time or Newsweek, appeared on the front of hip-hop magazine Vibe. They called him B-Rock.

But the adoration hasn't stopped now that the former underdog is victorious. Premier league rappers seem to be racing each other to put out musical love notes to the 44th president.

Election Night by Nas was posted online the day the country went to the polls. “America surprise us/And let a black man guide us,” he urged. Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am put the video for It's a New Day, his third pro-Obama song after Yes We Can and We Are the Ones, on YouTube last Friday. “The dreams that I've been dreaming/Have finally come true,” he whoops over relentlessly upbeat guitar licks. Jay-Z's We Made History appeared on the blog of its producer Kanye West on Sunday. “Now that all the smoke is gone/And the battle's finally won/Victory is ours,” gushes the chorus.

Even over here, Obama's rap connections are considered relevant enough for Dizzee Rascal to be deemed a suitable interviewee for Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. It makes a big change from Kanye West saying “George Bush doesn't care about black people” on live television in 2005.

Yet the rap world hasn't simply adopted Obama because he is black, or a looker, or even because his name rhymes nicely. (“His name is a nugget of lyrical gold. It sounds like a gunshot going off,” said Kweli.) He also embodies some of the foundations of hip-hop culture as a self-made man who didn't wait patiently for the big prize but grabbed it at the first chance he got.

Almost no rapper just wants to rap. They want their own record company, clothing line and Hollywood career. It is this go-getting spirit that Obama has said he admires. “What I've appreciated, watching this hip-hop generation, is how entrepreneurial they've been,” he said. “In the past, musicians oftentimes were commodities … I think they're a lot more sophisticated than in the past, and that is a wonderful thing.”

Despite hip-hop's long history of political rapping, from Grandmaster Flash's The Message to Public Enemy's Fight the Power, this is possibly the first time that rappers have not been seen as the enemy by a politician — as foul-mouthed, murderous women-haters responsible for most of society's ills. Obama listens to Jay-Z on his iPod and included a West track on a fundraising compilation album.

Nevertheless, the hip-hop president isn't afraid to criticise his new bedfellows where necessary. He gave short shrift to a recent Ludacris song, Politics (Obama Is Here), which called Hillary Clinton a “bitch”. He has also complained of rap with a “message that's sometimes degrading to women, uses the n' word a little too frequently. But also something that I'm really concerned about is [they're] always talking about material things, about how I can get something; more money, more cars.”

So if it wants to stay on the president-elect's good side, hip-hop will have to change. The culture's relationship with Obama is likely to be far more fractious in the future than it is this week. But thanks to him, its proponents now have something far more interesting to aspire to in verse than a better set of wheels.

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