How Hamilton produced “drill rap” star Slim Jesus

Apparently Hamilton is home to an up-and-coming rap star who goes by the name Slim Jesus. The Atlantic‘s CityLab attempts to find out why a white rapper from small-town Ohio has a video with more than 1.5 million YouTube views (image from the video is above) and close to 16,500 “thumbs-up” as well as more than 7,000 “thumbs-down.”

“His song ‘Drill Time’ has launched him into overnight celebrity status, in no small part to his gunshow spectacle, but also because of the power of social media,” Brentin Mock writes. “There are plenty of blogs, listicles, and Reddit threads attempting to explain who Slim Jesus is. However, his hometown of Hamilton — the city where (President George W.) Bush dropped bombs on education and Iraq in the same speech (in 2002) — perhaps most deserves examination to understand how Slim Jesus came to be.”

Among “the conditions that created Slim Jesus,” Mock focuses on Ohio’s vanishing manufacturing sector, which hit Hamilton especially hard, and the state’s steady pro-firearms legislative march.

“While gun violence is often associated with black teens, it’s not surprising to find such a huge arsenal of guns in the hands of the white, teenaged rapper,” he writes. “He’s a reflection of his city — which is 84 percent white and 22.9 percent poor — and a reflection of the values of the predominantly white National Rifle Association. Along with Slim Jesus, Ohio also produced Machine Gun Kelly, from Cleveland, a Rust Belt city that has recovered a bit better than Hamilton but is still in an economic rut.”

Read the full CityLab story here.