The folks over at Racialicious.com have put together a nice piece about this recent development. I won't repeat what they said. I'll just provide you with a link (click here) and encourage you to read it, and then come back and get my thoughts and share yours.
Now that you've visited the good folks at racialicious and read up on the topic, here are my thoughts.
As I stated in the racialicious comment section:
The Daily Kos has an interesting take on the values issues involved here as well. Apparently, McCain talked up Daddy Yankee’s song “Gasolina” without knowing the sexual theme of the song and the song title.
What will McCain do next? Call on Lil Wayne to perform “Lollipop” as a shout out to the confectioners union? This is truly as bad as Obama accepting an endorsement from Lil Jon while telling the audience of high school kids to get their “skeet skeet” on.
It is obvious that NO ONE in McCain’s inner circle has a clue when it comes to youth oriented cultural issues. Look at the track record: Daddy Yankee, the Britney and Paris Hilton ad, the cluelessness about the internet.OTHER THOUGHTS
The Double-Standard Part 1
Do we not remember all of the grief that Ludacris (and hip-hop in general) has received in relation to his (and its) relationship with Obama? But a Daddy Yankee endorsement for McCain flies under the radar. Granted, the endorsement did come in the middle of the DNC convention so the media's attention has been elsewhere. But this still reminds me of Bill O'Reilly's complaints about Ludacris and Pepsi while the Osbournes got off without any boycott threats.
Did the McCain camp even bother to look at some Daddy Yankee album covers?
Or maybe look at the names of a few tracks such as "Puerto Rico Mafia," "69," "Strip Tease," "N*gga What What," and "Gata Gangster."I'm not trying to hate on Daddy Yankee. Maybe none of those songs have anything in them that should concern the McCain camp. Maybe they do and it shouldn't matter. Maybe I'm assuming quite a bit about Daddy Yankee's music (with which I am not extremely familiar) - but then again, these types of assumptions are made about English-speaking Hip-Hop artists all the time.
Daddy Yankee's Sales
Will this do anything to Daddy Yankee sales? I seriously doubt it would improve them. But how would Hip-Hop fans feel if a credible rapper broke ranks and said something positive about McCain or negative about Obama. Oh, wait! Didn't 50 Cent do just that? He initially backed Hillary and then switched to Obama (when it was obvious that Obama had a shot to actually win). Did 50's flip-flop support matter in terms of votes? Probably not (thank goodness). Did his lack of initial support hurt his sales? Who knows. For what it's worth, G-Unit's album Terminate On Sight hasn't gone gold yet (according to info that I could find). But that's probably unrelated to 50's political views.
As for Daddy Yankee, I'm just not connected enough to Latino/a politics or the reggaeton fanbase to know if this matters. I think most Hip-Hop acts would be labeled as "sellouts" and their sales would plummet among a core portion of their audience. (However, Eazy-E never still seemed to be somewhat respected despite his support for a Republican president back in the day.) Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments section if you have any insight.
The Double Standard Part 2
McCain's camp loves to paint Barack Obama as this celebrity. (Since when has that been automatically a negative. And wasn't Ronald Reagan a celebrity?) After doing so, he then snatches up Daddy Yankee as an endorsement. I have no problem with getting celebrity endorsements. I do have a problem with political hypocrisy of the "I want to make celebrity a bad word, but here's a celebrity who likes me" variety. Don't knock Barack's celebrity and then try to play catchup in the celebrity game. It's lame.
Will it lead to votes?
This falls under my "who knows" theme. Daddy Yankee does appeal to a certain demographic that could prove to be important in swing states like Colorado and Florida.
All I know is that Daddy Yankee's name is out there.
Some of the comments over at Racialicious made it abundantly clear that Daddy Yankee is the likely big winner in all of this. My guess is that his record sales won't be hurt too much. If anything, there are now people who know about him that had absolutely no clue who he was. I promise you that there are large villages and small towns in this country where you can survey the residents and NO ONE would know who the hell Daddy Yankee is. That might change slightly.
UPDATE (8/29/08): Remember my statement above: "I think most Hip-Hop acts would be labeled as "sellouts" and their sales would plummet among a core portion of their audience." Fat Joe has apparently called Daddy Yankee a sellout. (Click here for more info.)
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