The viral video showing democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders entering a rally in California to DMX’s “Where the Hood At” turned out to be fake.
The video was edited and shared by Edwin Lacuna, who revealed his intentions behind it to Billboard over the weekend. “Standing in the crowd waiting for Senator Sanders can lead to daydreaming, and it did just that. I started with thinking how funny it would be if I edited a video to make it seem as if Bernie walked out to DMX, but after waiting a bit longer, I decided I’d turn it to a social experiment,” wrote Lacuna in a statement to the publication. “Everyone seems to be very easily fooled by anything they see on the internet. On one end we have a majority of the Twitter community going crazy and some going as far as even saying they’re ‘switching allegiances’ and ‘I was never going to vote but this just changed my mind’ to some people in the LGBT community saying they knew all along that Bernie Sanders is a ‘gay basher’ and to be honest, if I wanted that to be the message the song would have started completely different.”
Lacuna is referring to the song lyrics where DMX takes aim at Ja Rule and his alleged homosexual activities. It seems that some fans interpreted this as Sanders promoting an anti-gay message. He went on to explain that the unlikely pair up of Sanders and the Dark Man actually inspired others to join the political process. “Bernie has always made it a point that the youth needs to get more involved in the political process, and as funny as it may be that DMX’s ‘Where the Hood At? might have swayed them into doing so, it’s still very disappointing at the same time. I’ve observed each candidate very closely, and regardless of what people may thing of Bernie Sanders and their stance politically, there’s no denying he is a man of the people, and there is more than enough evidence to prove that. With all that being said, I hope everyone realizes that we still live in the real world, not the internet,” Lacuna concluded.
Even though the DMX relationship was manufactured, Sanders has still received support from many notable artists in the hip-hop community including Killer Mike, Nas and Big Boi. He even made an appearance at Coachella last year. DMX responded to the clip by telling Billboard “When God shows up he shows out.” He did not express any support for Sanders at the time.
Source: hiphopdx.com
