Everlast Blasts Donald Trump for Using ‘Jump Around’ at Rallies
Rapper Everlast has threatened to hit Donald Trump with a cease and desist order for using “Jump Around,” his 1992 hit with House of Pain, at campaign rallies.
In an interview with Billboard, the rapper — real name Erik Schrody — said someone on Twitter sent him a CNN clip featuring footage from a Trump rally where “Jump Around” was playing in the background. As Schrody noted sarcastically, “The smartest businessman in the world should know that you have to license this music if it makes an appearance on TV with you, and they’re making appearances on TV — so you’re a moron.”
Hey @realDonaldTrump stop using my song jump around at your rallies you piece of shit. Cease and desist is coming you scumbag.
— Mr. Whitefolks (@OGEverlast) April 5, 2016
Schrody joins a growing list of artists who have sparred with the Trump campaign for using their music, including R.E.M., Neil Young and Aerosmith. But the rapper said he wouldn’t take the Republican frontrunner to court because suing would be “a scumbag Donald Trump move.”
Schrody went on to call Trump a “fucking racist piece of shit” and accused the candidate and his campaign of purposely playing “Jump Around” — one of the biggest hip-hop hits by a white outfit — to “create these inroads to people’s demographic cubbyholes, so they can be like, ‘Yeah, we’re down with hip-hop. Yeah, we’re fucking cool.’
“Fuck that dude,” Schrody continued. “I’ll smack that fucker’s combover right off his fucking scalp.” He added: “This man is going to ruin this country single-handedly. Just the fact that he [could be] president is going to get us shunned by the world.”
For Schrody, Trump’s use of “Jump Around” is the second time in the last year his music has appeared in an upsetting context out of his control. His 1998 Everlast hit, “What It’s Like,” could be heard playing on the radio in the dashboard-camera recording taken from the car of the North Carolina police officer who shot and killed Walter Scott.
“It’s been weird, man,” Schrody said. “There are things that just throw you into the lexicon that you’re not mad at, and then there’s things that are like, ‘Really? I could have done without this attention, honestly.'”
As for his new music, Everlast is set to follow up 2013’s The Life Acoustic, with a new album, Cull, slated to arrive this year.