Entertainment

Does Waka Flocka Flame See His Prez Bid As a Joke?

by Kenya Foy

Aside from the fact that someone thinks Hillary Clinton's Chipotle visit should've involved tipping instead of texting, one of the more hilarious stories surrounding the 2016 presidential race is Waka Flocka Flame's presidential run. The 28-year-old rapper announced his intentions to run via Rolling Stone with a hilarious video titled "#WakaForPresident." Admittedly, my first reaction to this news was to throw my head back and laugh heartily. Oh Waka, I thought to myself, I hate to douse your presidential flame, but are you serious?! For someone who's supposedly vying for president, you would think he'd at least pretend to be familiar with the criteria for candidacy. Age requirements (you have to be 35) and prior political experience be damned, Waka is moving full steam ahead with his campaign and I'm beginning to think he totally believes his own hype.

While self-assuredness is certainly an admirable quality for a presidential candidate, I'm more convinced that this entire fiasco is actually Waka's way of sparking a new trend in music promotion. Apparently, it's been in the works since 2012, when he tweeted the most straight-forward presidential bid announcement ever: "I'm dead ass running for president in 2016."Then there's the matter of his platform, which involves raising minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, banning animals from restaurants and prohibiting anyone with size 13 feet or larger from walking in public. Honestly, this feels more like an extended episode for the new season of Punk'd , but I can't deny that Waka's working extremely hard to convince everyone otherwise.

For one, his Twitter avatar is a headshot that reads "#WakaForAmerica." He's also selling "Waka2016" t-shirts and even announced Dan Bilzerian as his new running mate, (which changed from DJ Whoo Kid since Waka announced his bid for office last week). He even took to the streets of Manhattan to collect signatures for a petition to have his name added to the 2016 ballot. That's impressive and all, but there's still the matter of that pesky age requirement, which Waka has yet to publicly address other than repeatedly tweeting "This is not a joke." Bustle has reached out to Waka's rep for comment on this, but has yet to hear back.

Will Waka become the first president to formally employ someone who rolls his blunts? Or will someone eventually pull the curtain on this charades and yell "Gotcha!" So far, Waka has yet to even show signs of pulling out of the race (that he technically can't even enter...), which means he's definitely committed to something, I'm just not sure what it is.