Viewers say the beats are fire, but critics say viral “hip-hop-aganda” exploits Black music and internet culture.
By Clayton Gutzmore
Word In Black
The missiles flying over Tehran and the Strait of Hormuz are real. So are skyrocketing gas prices, the war jitters, and the political exhaustion hanging over Americans already battered by inflation and another ugly election season.
But online, the latest conflict involving the United States and Iran has been repackaged into something stranger: viral AI-generated Lego videos that mock President Donald Trump with rap music, trap beats, punchlines and cartoon explosions. The clips are goofy on purpose, but beneath the humor is something critics say is more sophisticated, insidious — and far more dangerous.
It’s propaganda masquerading as entertainment — and using a Black American art form, one rooted in struggle, hardship and poverty, as the delivery device. Call it “hip-hop-aganda.”
Soundtrack of resistance
Simon Howard, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, says it’s no accident that the Iranian regime chose Black American music as the soundtrack for the campaign. After all, he says, rap and hip-hop are a “global language of resistance and identity” that have served as the soundtrack to revolutions and resistance movements worldwide.
“Based on what these individuals from Iran are doing, they are vocalizing their frustration with the U.S.,” Howard says.
News reports have tied the videos to Explosive News, a propaganda network with ties to the Iranian government.
In an interview with The New Yorker, an unnamed representative of Explosive News insisted it is a “student-led media team with a background in social activism.” The representative also insisted on anonymity out of fear that the success of their viral videos might make them targets of the U.S. government.
The organization, he said, is “totally independent”—“no government. No military. No state TV.”
‘I just love it so much’
What is clear, however, is that their videos are landing — hard — on social media.
“I’m loving all of the music!” Threads user @gnamo69 wrote in a recent post. “I was kind of losing my faith and hip-hop lately. I don’t know it’s just I’m old but these things are so one point I just love it so much.”
Another Threads user, @srblaker, concurred: “Another banger from the Iran Lego News crew. 🔥The Donny Boy smackdown continues.”
But user @axiom.daze was “conflicted” about enjoying obvious propaganda that nevertheless expresses their feelings about the Trump administration. “This is a Lego AI video allegedly from Iran, laying out everything our government tries to hide…and it shouldn’t be this catchy 🫣😅,” they wrote. “What a time to be alive.”
For decades, Hip Hop has been used to convey political messages and reflect where we are in society. From Jadakiss’s 2004 hit “Why” to Young Jeezy’s “My President Is Black,” hip-hop has been seen as a voice for the voiceless.
With inflation still squeezing working-class Americans, fears of a wider Middle East war growing, and Trump’s approval ratings taking a nosedive, the videos land in an audience primed for cynicism.
Dope Beats, High Stakes
The Lego clips mock American power and exploit public frustration, using hip-hop to package propaganda as relatable internet culture.
Though most are stinging critiques of the war with Iran, the videos’ subject matter has expanded. There are videos about Donald Trump falling asleep in a press conference and the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.
Dr. A.D. Carson, associate professor of hip hop in the global south at the University of Virginia, says the videos operate like a funhouse mirror, portraying Donald Trump and other political figures as goofy, cartoonish villains. This form of propaganda, he says, reflects the absurdity of our times.
“It feels as if they have their fingers on the pulse of something rhetorically significant,” Carson says. “Using Legos and Hip-Hop as a way to cut through the noise around political discourse is something to admire.”
At the same time, “I think that we should be vigilant about any of the media that we are engaging in — even if it is something that we see as entertaining or funny,” Carson says. “The stakes are incredibly high.”
Need for Media Literacy
A broader lesson from this content is the growing need for media literacy.
Both Cason and Howard say viewers in the U.S. should learn to think critically about what they’re seeing — even if it’s a humorous message that mocks Trump, slams an unpopular war, and calls out political hypocrisy.
Carson says the videos are “the kind of thing that draws more people in than the event,” particularly among people who get most of their news online. Vigilance, he says, “is going to be incredibly important because our ability to scrutinize media will determine what we are vulnerable to.”
With videos created by A.I., one social justice organization argues that this propaganda devalues the art form.
The Hip Hop Caucus is an organization that mobilizes communities of color to fight for racial, climate, and economic justice. Brittany Bell Surratt, the Caucus’s senior director of storytelling and communication, believes the Iranian Lego videos could dilute the art form because it lacks the lived experiences of Black communities navigating systemic inequality.
“When A.I. tools replicate the sound and aesthetic of hip hop without that lived context, it extracts from the culture,” she says. “What we’re seeing is both a testament to hip hop’s universal appeal and a warning about how easily culture can be extracted and repurposed without accountability.”
This article was originally published by Word In Black.
