As it turns out, Vivek Ramaswamy only got one chance to lose himself in music.
Marshall B. Mathers III, better known as rapper Eminem, has told Mr. Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, that he will no longer be allowed to use Eminem music during his campaign just weeks after Mr. Ramaswamy broke into a makeshift version of Eminem’s’ Lose Yourself’ at the Iowa State Fair.
The licensing division of Mr Mathers’ record company, BMI, informed the Ramaswamy campaign in a letter Wednesday and was reprinted in The Daily Mail on Monday that “BMI will cancel any performance of the Eminem works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date in will take into consideration. be a material breach” of the Company’s licensing rules, “for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies in respect thereto.”
The Ramaswamy campaign did not produce a battle. And it wasn’t common, this Eminem rap-along. At the fair, Mr. Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old political newcomer, had told Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds that his favorite “walk off” song was “Lose Yourself,” and an enterprising sound engineer blasted it over the fair’s loud music . speaker. The candidate took the microphone and joined in.
“Vivek just came on stage and went wild,” his campaign spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Monday. “To the chagrin of the American people, we’ll have to leave the rapping to the real Slim Shady,” another of Mr. Mathers’ noms de plume.
Although Mr. Ramaswamy has professed his love for Eminem, the breakup was probably inevitable. Mr. Ramaswamy has clung more strongly to Donald J. Trump and his right-wing populism than any other candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and Eminem is not a fan of the former president. In 2017, Eminem staged a famous freestyle protest against Mr. Trump, calling him “a kamikaze likely to cause a nuclear holocaust.”