Love it, hate it, or remain entirely skeptical of it — there’s no denying that Scott Isbell’s unlikely hit “Trumpified” is getting people talking, writing, and commenting.
The Acton native and senior at Emerson College posted his ode to Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump back in January. Since then, the track has garnered more than 35 million plays on Soundcloud, and the pop-rapper has been profiled by SPIN and Boston.com.
With the popularity of Trump unwavering, “Trumpified” has held steady on the Soundcloud charts — it sits at Number 4 in the week’s most popular songs, ahead of tracks by Wiz Khalifa, Fetty Wap, and Young Thug, with more than 3 million plays over the past seven days.
Some have speculated that the high play count is a result of his management, led by Worcester’s Jimmy Kang of Wu-Tang Entertainment, using fake bots to drive up the numbers, but Isbell’s camp denies this. Kang signed Isbell in 2013, and has since been guiding the student along a line between hip-hop and pop music. But with “Trumpfied”, things have suddenly accelerated.
“I wrote a song because I saw a lane in music where nobody was really writing about politics,” Isbell tells Boston.com. “I feel this country has become ‘Trumpfied’. I know Donald Trump comes across all of our minds every single day. At this point, he’s on the mind of the world. He was in a feud with the Pope. He’s created a buzz and a narrative better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Isbell, who says he will vote for Trump this fall, became impressed with the candidate last year after reading Trump’s 1987 book, The Art Of The Deal. But he wants to be known for much more than a follower of a controversial political figure.
“I don’t want to just be known as that Trump kid,” Isbell tells SPIN.
But as he raps in “Trumpified”: “Donald Trump is gonna fix that/He’s gonna fix that/And everything else/Trump will fix that.”
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