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J. Cole's Dreamville Records to Send Donald Trump Protestor Free Merchandise

J. Cole's Dreamville Records to Send Donald Trump Protestor Free Merchandise

J. Cole's Dreamville Records to Send Donald Trump Protestor Free Merchandise

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J. Cole's Dreamville Records to Send Donald Trump Protestor Free Merchandise

Right photo via Thomas DiMassimo’s Twitter

At a Donald Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio on March 12, a protestor named Thomas DiMassimo attempted to rush the stage before security forced him to the ground. That day, DiMassimo was wearing a Dreamville Records t-shirt, which got ripped during his protest. Dreamville, which is owned by J. Cole, noticed DiMassimo’s actions, and label manager Ibrahim Hamad has promised to send him new, free merchandise, as HipHopEarly points out.

Since the protest, Trump has attempted to connect DiMassimo to ISIS, citing a video that has been proved to be doctored (and since deleted, though Trump’s tweet has not been). When NBC’s Chuck Todd confronted Trump about his claims on “Meet the Press,” Trump responded, “If you look on the Internet, if you look at the clips, he was dragging an American flag.” He added, “He was playing Arabic music; he was dragging the flag on along the ground; and he had Internet chatter with ISIS and about ISIS, so I don’t know if he was or not, but all we did was put out what he had on his Internet.” The actual video is from a 2015 protest called #NotMyFlag. Clips of J. Cole’s “Be Free” (a 2014 tribute song to Michael Brown), Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry,” and more play in the background.

DiMassimo explained his motivations in a CNN interview. Watch that over at CNN, and see his protest, his Twitter interaction with Dreamville, Trump’s “Meet the Press” appearance, and the original #NotMyFlag video below.

Also this past weekend, protestors at a postponed Trump rally in Chicago chanted Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” In November 2015, J. Cole actually released his own verse over “Alright” called “Black Friday.” (Kendrick, in return, freestyled over Cole’s “A Tale of 2 Citiez.”)

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