Did you go to a fratty mid-Atlantic college in the late ’90s, have a Bob Marley blacklight poster, and squee to MTV Party to Go Platinum Remix while drinking Red Stripe at parties? Congratulations, Dawson! You know as much about rap as Marco Rubio, Fox News rap correspondent.

This specialized knowledge is, in fact, a major selling point of Rubio, the hard-drivin’ “New American Century” young-conservatism poster boy who hopes to become the GOP’s candidate for president:

So let’s check in on his Fox News clinic from yesterday in the video clip above:

Fox News: [Discuss] your love of Wu-Tang Clan. Do you have a favorite member?

Rubio: No. You know, I don’t know...

Fox: You can’t pick a favorite?

Rubio: No. That’s like… you know, uh, that’s like early ’90s stuff.

Note: This is the second time Rubio has insisted he likes Wu-Tang, but declined to name any members.

Give Rubio the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows some Wu-Tang members, but doesn’t want to take a controversial position. This, of course, is why Meth and Red exist!

Fox: Who do you listen to?

Rubio: Well—listen to, yes, but not with my kids there—Pitbull, who lives in Miami, and he’s great...

Note: Pitbull is not great. Rubio has acknowledged this on several occasions in the past. But he occasionally needs to remind voters that he is Floridian, Latino, and under 70. Bad move.

Rubio: But I really still—there’s a Sirius XM channel called Backspin, with all the stuff from the ’90s, I dunno, maybe I’m getting old. I still like especially the stuff that came out of the West Coast in California in the ’90s with Dre and then when Tupac went West Coast and abandoned the East Coast and all, that was a good time.

Note: Tupac moved with his mom to Marin County, California, from Baltimore when he was 17. His East Coast allegiances extended to writing a teenage Jada Pinkett love poems and joining the Young Communists while beatboxing in his performing arts high school.

Rubio: But I’m a West Coast fan. I don’t think they shoulda shot each other, and had a dispute that way, but I was a West Coast fan.

Note: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Rubio: You know, so Tupac went over to West Coast and went to Death Row Records and they produced just one of the greatest rap albums, which was the one that Dre put out, where it had ‘California’ [sic] and all these other songs.

This has been rap history with Marco Rubio, who has also said that “the only guy that speaks at any sort of depth is, in my mind, Eminem.”

Don’t forget to vote in 2016.

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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