Republican young gun Senator Marco Rubio wasted no time after Barack Obama's re-election before launching his own 2016 pre-campaign, speaking to GQ magazine's Michael Hainey in an interview that clearly underlines his most electable, non-Romneyish qualities ie his youth and his not-too-whiteness...right up to a discussion of his favorite rap music, which apparently includes Public Enemy, Eminem, Tupac and N.W.A. --but not so much the Pitbull and Nicki Minaj. Along the way, of course he found time to compare Obama to Fidel Castro (he's not comparing them, though, he's just saying...) and cast doubt over the age of the earth ("I'm not a scientist."). Yet the most disturbing thing may be just how on-point his analysis of the curent state of rap music is. Even so, I'm not sure if I am more unnerved by that or by how closely this Republican Senator's musings resemble the rants of certain commenters on this site (it's true!) Anyway, can't wait to see what the Rush Limbaughs of the world do with his N.W.A. shout out. Personally, I'll be impressed when he namechecks Kendrick Lamar (or better yet Frank Ocean). Read some of the choicest excerpts after the jump and get the full story at GQ (the print edition hits newsstands nationally tomorrow, November 20th).
Sen. Marco Rubio on his love of rap:
"People forget how dominant Public Enemy became in the mid-’80s. No one talks about how transformative they were. Hip-hop’s thirty years old now, and it’s become indistinguishable from pop music in general. Many people say Nicki Minaj is a rapper, but she’s also a singer. Kanye’s a rapper, but his songs aren’t pure rap anymore. You’ve got the guy from Miami, Pitbull, who’s on TV advertising for Dr Pepper."
On his three favorite rap songs:
“Straight Outta Compton” by N.W.A.“Killuminati” by Tupac.
Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
On his grandfather (their relationship is featured in his book An American Son: A Memoir), Obama & Castro:
My sense is that he would be troubled by the promise that more government can deliver. I’m not making any comparison between Barack Obama and Castro from Cuba—but I was raised in a community of people who were told that if government had more power, it could equalize things and it could give them more than others and at the minimum undo some of the unfair things that had been done to them, and they were very skeptical of that.
