“...I voted for the first time ever this year,” said Daniel Boskind, a local rapper known as Question?. “When Jay-Z is telling you to vote, you go vote.”
“...We're witnessing history. People are excited, and now politicians have to start paying attention to us — the hip-hop generation — if they want to win elections,” he said.
But artists must realize that they have such an influence, said Houston rapper Paul Wall, a panelist who said he sold his first CDs to a San Antonio record store. “Anything that we do, we're influencing people,” Wall said. “Hip-hop is the No. 1 form of marketing in the world. It's like our news....”
...That was music to the ears of Phillip Hodge, a certified nurse's assistant at the Audie Murphy VA Hospital who raps under the name Thuggizzle.
“There's way more hope this year in the community, and hip-hop is being promoted better,” said Hodge, 24. “This event helps me have a vision — maybe I can be the next one to make it.”
