At a presidential rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, MTV personality
Sway had the opportunity to speak with presidential candidate Barack
Obama to discuss issues such as the economy, Hip Hop, and of course
John McCain.
Since the interview took place after the presidential debate, Obama was able to speak on his overall opinion of the debate.
“I
think what we did was to try to just make clear some big differences
between John McCain and myself,” Obama explained to MTV‘s Sway. “He
thinks the war in Iraq was smart and he wants to stay there. We want to
end it. He thinks it was important to support George Bush‘s economic
policies. I think they’ve been a disaster.”
According to Obama, during the presidential debate McCain made allegations against him that were just not true.
“We’ve
become accustomed in our politics to folks just being able to make
stuff up or say whatever they want to say. It’s one of the few areas of
public life where the standards sometimes are lowered, in terms of you
being accurate about what you say about other people.”
Although some critics have blasted him for hit, Obama is still backing his appreciation of Hip Hop.
“I
enjoy it, but these days I don’t have the time to listen to it all the
time,” Obama shared with Sway. “I’m a little older than Hip Hop
culture. I was there at the beginning, but I was already getting
older…What I’ve appreciated, watching this Hip Hop generation, is to
see how entrepreneurial they’ve been. In the past, musicians oftentimes
were commodities. They were just shuffled around. Obviously, they did
well, but they didn’t have the vision to say, ‘I’m going to build a
business. I’m going to build my own studio. I’m going to create my own
production operations.’ I think they’re a lot more sophisticated than
in the past, and that is a wonderful thing.”
Some of the Hip-Hop artists in rotation on Senator Obama‘s iPod include Kanye West and Jay-Z.
In
a follow up story, Sway referred to his interview with Obama as a
milestone in his career and considers Obama an “everyday citizen.”
The next presidential debate will take place on October 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.
