Eminem has reportedly requested that his music be removed from an agreement with licensor BMI after Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went viral for rapping to one of his songs at the Iowa State Fair.
A cease-and-desist letter is said to have been sent to Ramaswamy’s campaign lawyer last week, telling them that Eminem is objecting to the use of his songs.
“I’ve kind of not been at the top of my game in keeping up with my music, but … I would probably be the presidential candidate in U.S. history that would do a best now or future karaoke [version] of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself,’” he said in July. “I’ll commit to that.”
The rapper Eminem reached out to the music licenser BMI and asked that the Ramaswamy campaign’s license to use his music be revoked, according to a letter obtained by DailyMail.com.
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by Daily Mail
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In a letter dated August 23, a representative for BMI informed the campaign’s lawyer that the label had ‘received communications from Marshall B. Mathers, III, professionally known as Eminem, objecting to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign’s use of Eminem’s musical compositions (the “Eminem Works”) and requesting that BMI remove all Eminem Works from the Agreement.’
The correspondence goes on to say that ‘this letter serves as notice that the Eminem Works are excluded from the Agreement effective immediately.’
‘BMI will consider any performance of the Eminem Works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the Agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies with respect thereto,’ the letter read. Moments later, when the sound-tech guy started blasting the 2002 rap tune, which was on the movie soundtrack for the movie losely based on white rapper Eminem’s life, 8 Mile, Ramaswamy grabbed he mic and created a viral campaign trail moment.
‘Vivek just got on the stage and cut loose. To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to the real slim shady,’ a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign told DailyMail.com, reacting to the cease and desist letter.
Ramaswamy had performed libertarian-themed raps under the stage name ‘Da Vek’ during his undergraduate years at Harvard University – and has been a longtime fan of Eminem.
‘I did not grow up in the circumstances he did,’ said Ramaswamy, whose Indian immigrant parents were an engineer and a physician. ‘But the idea of being an underdog, people having low expectations of you, that part speaks to me,’ he told The New York Times earlier this month.
Ramaswamy said in a 2006 interview with his alma mater’s newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, that “Lose Yourself” was a go-to for his rapper alter ego “Da Vek.”
“I think that children should be forced to listen to it,” a then 21-year-old Ramaswamy said. “The edited version, of course.”
Nearly 17 years later, Ramaswamy told ABC News he would commit to an Eminem karaoke session when asked if the song was still his anthem — plans that now seem halted.
