So I have pretty much been obsessed with the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker, ever since I saw him speak at my cousin’s graduation at Hampton University in May. My obsession peaked when I saw him on “Oprah’s Next Chapter”. Let me tell you, this man is AMAZING: undergrad at Stanford, Varsity football player, Rhodes scholar, and Yale Law. So that day I followed him on twitter and tweeted him. The tweet expressed my love and admiration for the handsome Mayor, and to my surprised he followed me back! From then, I’ve been hooked. The way he uses twitter to connect with his constituents is amazing. While he doesn’t reply to each of the thousands of tweets he receives everyday, he responds to A LOT of them, offering help in anyway that he can. When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey, Cory Booker took his amazingness to a new level. Mayor Booker relentlessly responded to tweets in the days following Sandy to address the concerns of his city. He visited people, gave them his number to call if they needed further assistance, he even opened his home for people to stop by to eat, relax, and recharge.
Throughout the seriousness of the hurricane and power struggles, Mayor Booker kept his sense of humor. When a man from Dublin tweeted Mayor Booker about fixing his pothole, Mayor Booker responded, “Sir, it looks like you live in Dublin, Ireland. I’ve got 99 problems [and] your ditch ain’t one,” remixing Jay Z’s “99 problems.”
(That same day in a rally for Obama in Ohio, Jay Z himself changed his song to say, “I got 99 problems and Mitt ain’t one.”)
But this isn’t the first time the Mayor has used this remix:
Or the second time:
“99 Problems” HAS to be one of Mayor Booker’s favorite songs; he even talks about it in this interview!
Many people have suggested that Cory Booker could be the next black president (although he’s denied any interest in being president, his main goal being making Newark a better place). But like our current president, he’s obviously a fan of Jay Z and hip hop. In an interview with All Hip Hop, Mayor Booker says he loves Queen Latifah, Eminem, Jay Z, Common, Tupac, Biggie, and Run DMC. Mayor Booker says that “music is a great unifier: it bridges racial, religious and cultural divides and actually unifies a people.” And I couldn’t agree with him more!
Although his “99 problems” joke is a little corny, it shows just how important hip hop is becoming in our country. A major hip hop artist is close friends with the president, and is admired by a potential presidential candidate (or at least one of the greatest mayors out there). And imagine if all elected officials used twitter like Cory Booker, for one, the youth would definitely be heard and so would many other people. I think Cory Booker is great example of the future of politics, and now that Obama has been re-elected, I can finally get my hopes up for #Booker2016 or 2020, etc!