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Personal >> Barack Obama gives a rebuff with Jay-Z's gesture

Barack Obama gives a rebuff with Jay-Z's gesture

"Dirt off Your Shoulder" was turned later into a single for the Collision Course, the mash-up album of Jay-Z. It was united with the Linkin Park song "Lying from You". It is a featured track in DJ Hero, a music video game, developed for various video game consoles.

This hit became especially famous and mighty, when the gesture of Jay-Z was repeated several times by Barack Obama during the debates in 2008. This is the moment when politics and pop culture merged. It was done right after Hilary Clinton attacked the rival. The presidential candidate acknowledged this way to be a hip-hop fan and a fan of Jay-Z referencing his hit and a move from the dance. There were a lot of arguments concerning these gestures. Some people were just puzzled and could not understand what Obama was doing. Richard Cohen, a columnist from Washington Post called this behavior "aloof", "contemptuous", and "not smart". Whether it was done deliberately or not, this is the first time when pop culture and hip hop culture became the subject of discussion on such a high level. The spokesman of Obama's campaign noticed later that Barack Obama had some songs of Jay-Z on his IPod. Famous blogger Spencer Ackerman called the move the coolest cultural reference made in the American political history. The clip with this moment was uploaded to YouTube and it was viewed by 100,000 people within a day only. Later the mashups appeared.

It is said in the Urban dictionary that the expression to brush off one's shoulders means putting enemies away from you. Obama did not worry over the sharp remarks, he used the eloquent gesture. At the end of the say the first mashup appeared, which lasted just for a minute. In this mashup of the Jay-Z song, created by Bill3948, the attack of Clinton is shown. While Obama brushed, the rivals flew away from the shoulders. It surely helped Obama to score a great number of young votes.