In a manner of speaking, no one has dominated the headlines in the hip-hop community quite like Eminem has. Following his now-famous cypher at the BET Hip-Hop Awards where he took Donald Trump to task for his many questionable and/or downright deplorable decisions as President of the United States, the message behind his words has been all the talk in most circles of the media. The original video, uploaded by BET after the fact, has been viewed more than 31 million times since and elevated Eminem to the status of music's foremost anti-Trump activist. Now, his cypher is getting an Internet mashup treatment, blending his words with the music of another notably political group: Rage Against the Machine.
In a video made by DJ Cummerbund, a mashup and remix artist based in the United States, Slim Shady's cypher is given some thunder as a music background, with the angry guitar riffs and brooding bassline of their 1990's classic "Bulls On Parade" providing the instrumental backdrop. There was some editing done to the freestyle itself, so don't expect it to appear fully intact as you heard it in its original acapella form. That being said, there's some real chemistry between the music and lyrics here that provides a real sonic synergy to Em's incendiary remarks about the current President. You can check out the comparison below.
First up is the OG version that aired on BET:
And here is the mashup version featuring the Rage Against the Machine instrumental:
There's no real way to quantify if one is truly better than the other, but if you're one of those people who found the rapping without words thing a little on the cringeworthy side (and there are more than a few out there on Twitter for sure), then you might find the mashup far more palatable an experience. The bottom line is, with or without the music, Em's message continues to resonate beyond the borders of rap music and has seeped into the fabric of our popular culture, especially the part that intersects with politics. Hopefully this means that new studio material from Michigan's first son of hip-hop isn't far away either.