The rap legend died in 1996.
Proving once more that she’s got her finger square on the pulse of pop culture, Kamala Harris‘ pick for “best rapper alive” was one that’s been inarguably dead for the better part of the last 30 years.
As the headlining speaker at this year’s NAACP convention, Harris opened her segment with a lightning round of questions from CNN’s Angela Rye. The line of inquiry covered her morning routine, how she greets crowds in the pandemic era, who would elicit a “fangirl” reaction from the prospective VP (TLDR: Beyoncé,) and whether she was aware of the fact that she shared a birthday with Snoop Dogg. It was a bit of softball to warm-up for more hard-hitting topics later in the interview. But when Rye asked Harris to name “the best rapper alive,” things got a little strange in a hurry.
Harris, clearly wracking her brain to answer a very straightforward question, blurted out her submission: the late Tupac Shakur, who, despite whatever conspiracy wormholes you may have gone down over the last few decades, has been dead since 1996. Rye, picking up the fumble, did what she could to make sense of the selection. “Listen, West Coast girls think Tupac lives on. I’m with you,” said Rye, quickly cleaning up Harris’ response. Insisting she name a rapper who was actually alive, Rye did manage to get something resembling a legitimate response out of Harris. “There’s some I would not mention right now because they should stay in their lane,” Harris continued, subtly jabbing at a certain Chicago rapper with White House ambitions.
It wasn’t all sloppy posturing, though. Harris went on to discuss the legacy of the late Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, likening her judicial impact to that of Thurgood Marshall’s. “There was such an inverse relationship between her size and stature,” Harris noted.
You can watch the full discussion between Kamala Harris and Angela Rye below, beginning at the 23:35 mark.