By Seandra Sims




It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since Barack Obama was sworn in as America’s first Black President. Halfway through his historic term, Obama has taken more uppercuts to the chin than Apollo Creed from “Rocky.” AllHipHop.com picked the brains of Nelly, boxing promoter Don King, activist Davey D, culture analyst Nida Khan and others. Let’s look back at some of Obama’s fiercest brawls in 2010:






OBAMA vs. 2000-2008

A lot of Americans suffer from amnesia and forgot those eight awful Bush years that started a Middle Eastern war, tanked the economy, and pretty much had the whole world hating us. Two years into the biggest crap cleanup ever, Conservatives (and a few Liberals) are blaming President Obama for damm near everything bad that has happened this decade.

Part of Obama overcoming the past might be a clear plan for the future. In a recent AllHipHop interview, Hip-Hop journalist, activist, and scholar Davey D says, “His most challenging task has been confidently selling his vision, plans of action, and ideal marching orders that make sense to his those who voted for him. He's not been good at doing that.”

Nida Khan, a well-known cultural analyst and correspondent for WRKS Kiss 98.7 FM in New York shares with AllHipHop, “As President of all the people, Obama’s biggest challenge [in 2010] by far was pleasing all the people all the time, which as we know is virtually impossible - even for a ‘rockstar’ leader. Couple that with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an unprecedented global financial catastrophe, two wars, and opposition leaders whose only purpose is to ensure that this President fails.” Sheesh.

Veteran rapper Nelly tells AllHipHop people should cut the President some slack: “We can’t judge him on his job, because he’s too busy cleaning up someone else’s sh*t….it’s not like this man walked into a clean slate. No one walks into a clean slate, but this man’s slate was dirtier than any I’ve ever seen in my life.” Seemingly, lots of people in 2010 were willing to blame their hard times on Obama without remembering history. Says Nelly, ”Everybody’s like ‘he’s not fixing things,’ but that sh*t was broke before he got there.”






OBAMA vs. Mother Nature

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti in January, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving the tiny island in total ruin. The President’s wallet was already slim from the War and the recession, but the humanitarian call was urgent, and he allocated over $700 million to help Haitians.

After President Obama joked that D.C. residents didn’t know real winters, Mother Nature served him up a one-two punch with two monster-sized blizzards in Winter 2010. Nearly 5-feet of snow fell total on the East Coast, shutting down everything including the government. Obama paid for his joke with millions in cleanup fees, calling it “Snowmageddon.”

From April to July 2010, BP Oil Company’s faulty pipelines caused the largest environmental disaster in history along the Gulf Coast, and President Obama was left to clean up the mucky, bad PR. Promising to punish BP for the mistake, he ended up taking a hit for not telling the truth about how much oil was really gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. To top it off, he ate seafood from the polluted water to prove it was safe to eat. Uhh, yeah.






OBAMA vs. Bad Health

President Obama made history in March 2010 by passing a reform bill, making healthcare a reality for all Americans. What should’ve been a good thing turned into one of Congress’s ugliest ongoing fights ever.

Even millionaire rappers like Nelly felt strongly about how it affected Americans, telling AllHipHop, “I think the top political issue right now that’s pissing me off right now – and I would say it’s until they find an efficient resolution and not a band-aid resolution – is when you talk about health care.”

Obama passed the bill, but his rivals in Congress are already trying to overturn most of it. Davey D sees this as a sign of weakness: “President Obama has a bad habit of over- compromising on important issues or outright abandoning them. We saw him do this with health care reform where he said he supported single payer…later he said public option, and now not only do we not have any of those things, but we see his political enemies suing and making plans to reverse, while large parts of his base became disenchanted with him for selling too soon and too short.” Score a body blow for Davey D – hopefully Obama has good health insurance.

Adds Nelly, “If you can’t afford insurance, it’s gonna piss you off, and if you can afford insurance, you figure you’re paying for something the government should already be helping you out on. So either way, you’re pissed off about it.”






OBAMA vs. A Tea-Partying Witch

2010’s midterm elections were brutal. The Democrats came unraveled and the most riled-up Conservatives – the Tea Party Express – waged a smear campaign that cost many key Democratic seats in Congress.

The election got crazy when Tea Party Senate candidate/former witch (yes, a witch) Christine O’Donnell from Delaware caught the national spotlight for her campaign antics. Back in 2008, she told Fox News that Obama was “anti-American…he did not vote for English as the official language” – a zany vote that would allow no U.S. documents in other languages. As an added insult, a woman from MoveOn.org, a grassroots organization that backs Obama, had her head stomped by Tea Party members at a rally. Damm.

Did President Obama forget who had his back in the midst of the last election chaos? “Only at the 11th hour of the midterms did we see him reach out aggressively to the young urban audience who supported him in record numbers in ‘08. If this continues, he'll be a one-term President,” foretells Davey D.





OBAMA vs. His Birth Certificate

Few Presidents in history have had to defend their U.S. citizenship. But Obama’s wacky half-White/half Kenyan, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia life story provided enough leverage for opponents to question it all the way to the Supreme Court.

“Don´t be distracted by the birth certificate and Indonesia issues," New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio said on the Citizen Wells website. "They are irrelevant to Obama’s ineligibility to be president.” Donofrio was one of many who filed lawsuits claiming Obama was not “natural-born,” leaving one to wonder if Obama hatched from an egg instead.





OBAMA vs. The Brothas

Just being a Black President doesn’t mean the brothas and sistas are always going to ride with you. 

First it was Tavis Smiley, and in 2010, activist, professor, and author Cornel West became extra-vocal about Obama, saying, “He doesn’t care about the Black poor – the evidence is overwhelming! His policies are racist in effect and consequence and especially classist in terms of generating misery among poor people, disproportionately Black and brown…” It was Kanye vs. Dubya all over again, except they’re both Black. Ouch.

2010 left some Hip-Hop heads feeling the same way. “President Obama let us down, by not following through on how he communicated with the many people who voted for him. I understand the pressure he's under especially being a Black man in the White House,” says Davey D. “The racism he's faced has been over the top. Where's he failed us is by cutting off the dialogue he started with us when he campaigned. He stopped appearing in mediums that we frequent, and the end result has been a nagging perception [that] he abandoned many of the people he initially energized,” he adds.

“Because of Obama, many who never engaged in political discourse found themselves registering people to vote and promoting this refreshingly optimistic politician as if he were the newest, hottest MC on the planet,” says Nida Khan about his rockstar effect. “But just like an artist with a killer first single, Obama suffered a setback when many of his throngs of supporters never bothered to listen to the entire album.”

“Instead of searching for the next quick fix, perhaps what we need to do is find a tune - aka a message - that really resonates with us and stick with it till it alters the course of history for the better,” she adds. “That is, after all, the only way to differentiate between a one-hit wonder and a classic.”

Along the way, some O.G.’s still stood up for the President. Notorious and outspoken boxing promoter Don King tells AllHipHop in an exclusive interview, “That young man has a tremendous responsibility. Our young people have got to realize who the REAL enemy is. [Obama’s] fighting against that enemy everyday – for liberty and justice for all.”





OBAMA vs. Apathy

Along with Ron Brownz and Busta Rhymes, Hip-Hoppers “popped champagne/for Barack’s campaign” on Election Night 2008. The people chanted, cheered, and cried, and in 2009, Obama challenged us to work for change. A few did, but most returned to life as normal, and when that didn’t work, the blame started. In 2010, the celebration for the Black President all but disappeared. 

Says Nida Khan, “When the energy and enthusiasm of young folks wasn’t utilized, and they felt abandoned, they naturally became disinterested in many ways. And once you lose the grassroots, you lose your foundation. Once that goes, things get shaky.”

Davey D co-signs that notion and lends some advice to the President: “The enthusiasm will come back when seats at the table are given, and we see more of a robust dialogue between Obama and this core group…President Obama needs to clean house and make sure he has people who really have cache with the young communities he wants to reach. He needs to know not every celebrity or rapper does the trick; many of them have lost influence. He could be more savvy by digging deeper into those communities and engaging them better.”



The Judges’ Decision

Obama’s tough lesson for 2010 might be that winning is only temporary.  Says Nelly, “What’s going to be interesting is the next election, because you want to find out if the people who supported him in the very beginning were there from a publicity standpoint, because they knew all of the cameras were going to be on this young Black man running for President.” 

America’s Golden Boy is on the ropes, but like Muhammad Ali, he’s one of the “greatest of all time.” This month, he showed that by passing a tax cut and overturning the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law which kept gays out of the military for years. He was also ranked 2010’s “Most Admired Man” in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

The beef has come fast and furious, but the President’s taking his beating with swagger. Like Denzel in “Glory,” he may have one tear rolling down his cheek, but he’s not gonna flinch.