There are some people in the Hip Hop community whose opinions on Barack Obama‘s presidential run come as no surprise–will.i.am, Q-tip and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson are but a few. Somewhere on the other end of that spectrum lies Jermaine Dupri. The Atlanta-based producer and industry mogul, who currently serves as the president of urban music for Island Records, recently strayed away from the cozy confines of blogging about the happenings in the recording industry. After watching the Democratic National Convention last week, Dupri says Sen. Obama“touched me in a way no politician ever has before.”
Dupri‘s sentiments echoed those of dozens of other members of the Hip Hop community who have given their sometimes unwelcome endorsements of the Illinois senator. What many probably didn’t expect was Dupri‘s willingness to take others such as Tavis Smiley, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dr. Cornel West to task for their critique of Obama‘s comments regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [click to read]. JD explained that while he admires and respects Smiley and West, he disagrees with their opinions of the speech.
“What he said was exactly what he needed to say to introduce himself to apolitical folks like me and get us fired up and ready to make a change,” writes Dupri. “It was his job to lay out the plan that will bring America into the 21st century, and that’s what he did.”
Dupri added that more emphasis should be placed on America’s future, not its past because “that’s the kind of bullshit that old people who’ve been here forever get stuck on.”JD also compared the elder generations critique of Obama to the recent feud between Ice T and Soulja Boy and warned that “if we keep trying to fight progress, it’s gonna march right past us.”
As for the issue of why he decided to wait so long to become involved in the political process, Dupri offered the following explanation writing, “I’ve always been the guy who found politics boring, and I haven’t trusted anyone in Washington to do anything for me for a long while. It had no relevance to me, and I never really got what all the hype about Obama was about.”
In addition to his post at Island, Dupri serves as the president of TAG Records and is also the founder of So So Def Records. In 2007 the Guinness Book of World Records named him the most successful R&B producer of all time. His entire blog at the political website HuffingtonPost.com can be found here.
