Eminem Tells GOP Presidential Candidate Don’t Use My Music

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has taken to rapping on the campaign trail, appears to be backing down after Grammy-award winning rapper Eminem asked him to stop performing his songs at campaign events. In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by NBC News and first reported by The Daily Mail, the performing rights organization BMI told Ramaswamy’s campaign Wednesday that it “has received a communication from Marshall B. Mathers, III, professionally known as Eminem, objecting to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign’s use of Eminem’s musical compositions.”

Ramaswamy grabbed headlines when he rapped Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” onstage at the Iowa State Fair. An older video, from Ramaswamy’s senior year at Harvard University in 2006 when he rapped the 2002 hit under his stage name “Da Vek,” also went viral.

Ramaswamy isn’t the first presidential candidate to get pushback from artists over use of their music. In 2015, Neil Young’s longtime manager said Donald Trump was not authorized to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” in his presidential candidacy announcement. Fifteen years earlier, George W. Bush was asked to stop playing the 1989 hit “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty.

Source: NBC News