Forgiato Blow was getting a lot of attention.
He had just pulled up to the MAGA-themed vice presidential debate watch party in Jupiter in his iridescent Tesla Cyber Truck so that a three-person French documentary film crew could capture it on camera. Later, he would show them his bling (a $100,000 solid gold chain with Donald Trump’s head and a quarter-of-a-million-dollar diamond-encrusted BLOW), pose with a fan (a 17-year-old named Chris) and talk to members of South Florida’s Republican Party inside a dimly lit Italian restaurant with a sign that reads: “If you are still a Biden supporter, this restaurant is not for you.”
It’s hard to quantify the celebrity of Forgiato Blow, whose legal name is Kurt Jantz. To the average person sitting next to him on the plane on the way to a Trump rally or passing him outside a strip mall, the rapper with a Bitcoin face tattoo dressed head to toe in Trump merchandise might just seem like a regular guy harboring a bit of an obsession with the former president. But Jantz isn’t just a Trump fan; he’s also a bit of a celebrity in his own right, with several songs streamed millions of times. He just isn’t performing for the masses — yet.
Jantz considers himself one of the pioneers of “MAGA music,” an emerging Trump-themed genre rooted in Florida: “I created the culture,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel outside of Uncle Eddie’s Ristorante, which hosted the debate watch party earlier this month. “I changed the culture.”
The rapper is part of a niche-but-growing group of artists who have rooted their music and personal brand in Trumpism. Styles within the emerging genre run the gamut from rap to pop to country to gospel with song titles like “Red Hat Stays On,” “Trump Trump Baby,” “Boycott Target” and “I’m Seeing Red.” All celebrate the former president and current Republican nominee and proclaim, in upbeat hooks over catchy beats and earwormy choruses, the stances he has come to represent in the country’s culture war.
Many of the songs criticize “woke-ism.” In the music video for “Boycott Target,” Jantz, MAGA gospel singer Jimmy Levy and fellow MAGA rappers walk through a Target store and claim the company is indoctrinating children with pro-LGBTQ views. The video opens with Levy pushing Jantz around in a shopping cart while he waves pride-themed wine bottles. Levy, who sings about washing Target “with the blood of Christ,” later told the South Florida Sun Sentinel it was “just to be funny.” Not everyone saw it that way, though. The video was taken off of YouTube.
The homegrown MAGA music scene found its foothold in Florida: Several of the musicians writing and producing the polarizing and sometimes internet-viral songs grew up in the state. South Florida, in particular, has served as a mecca for Trump singers and rappers; they come together for Trump celebrations, pro-Trump music festivals, events at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, or dance parties in the streets of Jupiter.
“If you look at Florida musically since the 1980s, it’s been a real incubator of underground music,” said Justin Patch, a music professor at Vassar College and author of The Art of Populism in US Politics: Pro-Trump DIY Popular Culture. He added, “South Florida is another one of those places where this music takes hold of people who really embrace it as their own in ways that are really cool. This is like a South Florida thing. And so when MAGA rapping popped up in South Florida, I was absolutely unsurprised by this.”
The music also fills a void: Many of the mainstream artists Trump and his supporters may have listened to in the past have now come out against him, including Taylor Swift and Celine Dion. Several living artists and even the estates of those who have died have told him to stop using their music.
Some of the MAGA music world’s elites, like Jantz, have garnered small amounts of attention from Trump and clout in the political sphere. Meanwhile, major online music critics like Anthony Fantano have reacted — negatively — to their songs.
“It’s a small space. It truly is,” MAGA country singer-songwriter Jesslee, who performs under a single name, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’s a small space of artists because it is a very scary, vulnerable position to put yourself in.”
‘Mayor of MAGAville’
Online, Jantz proclaims himself the “Mayor of MAGAville” as well as “Donald Trump’s nephew,” which is also his name on X (where he has over 250,000 followers) and handle on Instagram (@donaldsnephew47). He is not actually Donald Trump’s nephew, he explains during a quick break from the documentary. But he says the former president doesn’t seem to mind. Identifying as Trump’s nephew is just Jantz’s brand, a brand that, he explains, isn’t actually just about Trump.
He speaks breathlessly without pausing: “It’s not just about Trump, we’re doing this for the movement and that’s why it’s lasted so long, it’s a movement. That’s why they play my songs. That’s why they let me, you know, have ‘Trump’s nephew.’ Like Trump could take that and cancel that brand tomorrow. I got billboards with it, all my jewelry, all my stuff. If Trump really wanted to he could cease-and-desist that.”
Branding and image are crucial within the DIY MAGA sphere, according to Patch: The MAGA subculture is already a motley assortment of people of varying persuasions and beliefs, joined in celebrating the image of Trump and all that he represents to them. MAGA artists build their celebrity off of that image.
“That seems to be the thing that pulls everything together,” Patch says. “It’s image and Trump. And so that, to me, will be the biggest challenge if Trump loses and exits the national spotlight. Can MAGA run without a central figurehead and, if not, is there going to be a kind of power struggle for who the next figurehead is?”
A ‘grift’?
Jantz, from Clearwater, began in the mainstream music scene and has collaborated on a remix with Vanilla Ice and Rick Ross. But after mainstream success didn’t pan out, he said, he changed paths. In 2016, he released his first pro-Trump song, “Silver Spoon.”
“I’m like, you know, where does the money come from? Where does the success, the career, the concerts, touring, like why is none of this coming to me?” Jantz said. “And I just started to create my own lane. So I thought I was the Donald Trump of rap.”
A sense of alienation runs deep for Jantz, whose parents sent him to military boarding school from fifth grade until he was a senior.
“I never lived in my home with my family,” he said. “I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. These are things that happened to Trump. He went to military boarding school.”
A few minutes later, speaking about his drive to succeed, he again shifted to talking about Trump.
“Maybe because I got sent to boarding school and didn’t have that family love when I was young, maybe it’s kind of instilled in me just to be successful, to prove everybody wrong,” he explained. “And I’m an underdog and who knows, people say you might have a great ending or might be a lonely ending. You never know, like Donald Trump. Why is Donald Trump still running for president?”
A French documentary film crew captures Kurt Jantz, aka Forgiato Blow, and attendees of the Palm Beach County Republican Party debate watch party at Uncle Eddie’s Ristorante in Jupiter. (Shira Moolten/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Altogether, Jantz claims he now makes $50,000 a month from his various enterprises, which don’t just include MAGA music. Still, he rejects the idea that he joined the movement to chase clout.
“A lot of people would say this music is a grift or we make this music because we can’t compete with regular musicians,” he said, describing that as “B.S.” before listing off a series of celebrities he worked with prior to going MAGA.
MAGA gospel star Jimmy Levy, meanwhile, has directly referred to what he does as “trolling,” at least in part. The 26-year-old Miamian has over 1 million followers and seems to thrive off the backlash he knows his outlandish takes will generate and has made it part of his divisive shtick. He said he entered the MAGA music sphere after “the media” began “calling me all these names.”
A recent Miami New Times headline referred to Levy as a “flat-earther.” Social media posts depict him wearing flat-earther merch. It is hard to tell what he actually believes, and what is him “trolling.”
“My trolling has gotten me through the hardest times,” he wrote in an Instagram caption, sharing the Miami New Times headline.
“I figured, you know what, I’m not going to stop them calling me names,” Levy told the Sun Sentinel. “Why not just embrace it?”
To fit with some of his “nicknames,” Levy had taken to wearing a tin-foil hat in videos on social media, something he also called himself “cringe” for doing. He has made and shared posts online that vaccines are not safe, that recent hurricanes Milton and Helene were man-made or manipulated, and that when his portable phone charger exploded in his backpack on a flight last year it was a “spiritual attack from the pits of hell.”
The conspiracies, copyright infringement and other controversies often lead YouTube and other streaming platforms to remove MAGA music.
Jantz’s song “Trump Trump Baby” with Amber Rose, a model known for dating Kanye West, was played at the Republican National Convention, but a copyright infringement claim over the use of the beat to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” forced him to remove it. Over the two months since the RNC, Jantz says he hasn’t been able to put out any music.
“All my groups, silent, I’m silent, and you know, they don’t care,” he said. “It’s like I have lawyers fighting it but you know music makes thousands and you gotta spend millions to save thousands. It doesn’t really make sense.”
In “Boycott Target,” which topped charts, reports say, before YouTube removed it, Jantz raps that the “LGBTQ done went too far” while using a slur for trans people. Other songs raise the possibility that hidden forces are working against Trump. One clip for a music video that doesn’t appear on YouTube depicts MAGA pop artist Hadas Levy in an orange jumpsuit singing, “We don’t trust the left/only in Trump we trust” while Jantz, seated in the witness stand of a courtroom, raps, “Bang Bang, put your hands up, J13 was a set-up,” referring to the date of the first assassination attempt. (There is no evidence to support this claim.)
Jantz doesn’t see his music as deserving of censorship.
“I was rapping about drugs, guns and murder and they didn’t care,” he said.
MAGA country singer Jesslee said TikTok denied her “I’m Seeing Red” sound multiple times before eventually accepting it. Some fans who tried to make videos with the sound have been “flagged” by the app.
“I’ve never had a problem with any of my music or anything that I’m saying,” she said, “and then the second I start talking about Trump, I’m having stuff being pulled down and stuff being flagged.”
Jantz and artist Jimmy Levy say their continued ostracization now strengthens their alliance to the movement.
Jesus was ostracized, too, Levy said.
‘Fighting back with music’
MAGA music’s relatively fleeting existence on mainstream platforms might give the impression that its reach is small. But the music has found a dedicated fanbase.
At the Jupiter watch party, Jantz put his arm around Chris, the 17-year-old fan in a MAGA hat, for a photo. The teen, who declined to give his last name for privacy reasons, said he discovered MAGA rap music in eighth grade.
“I was on YouTube one day and I just saw him,” Chris told the Sun Sentinel. “… Here’s these guys and, traditionally, you don’t think of people making hip hop music in MAGA hats.”
At that point, Chris saw politics as “for older people.” But over the next two to three years, that changed. The turning point?
“When I saw how much they were trying to attack Trump,” he said, referring to the media.
In Palm Beach County, 50 to 60 Trump supporters group together on the corner of Indiantown Road and Military Trail every Friday and blast the songs, said Kathleen Madaras, who stood by the entrance to Uncle Eddie’s on debate night, holding a large cross that read “God Bless Trump.” Sometimes MAGA artists film music videos there.
Madaras liked the music so much that she started playing it while doing things around the house.
“Every time Trump does something positive, they try and slam it; the more crowds he gets, then they say they’re a fake crowd,” she said. “So then what’s happening is people are fighting back with music.”
Around her, locals in MAGA hats filed past a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trump. Trump iconography covered the walls. Some selected from a bowl of MAGA pins.
“Oh I love Trump,” one woman said, reaching inside. “I need two Trumps.”
One of the attendees was MAGA pop singer and Boca Raton resident Hadas Levy, who recently put out an album called “Nov 5th” with Jantz ahead of the election. In colorful music videos, Levy and Jantz sing and rap surrounded by fans waving Trump flags. Some recent videos were filmed at the corner; members of the county’s Republican Party chapter made appearances.
“I tried to warn y’all four years ago,” Levy says in a voiceover intro to “Trump Town,” overlaying a bubblegum pop sound, as the video depicts her exiting Jantz’s cybertruck in a Trump Town T-shirt and black leather shorts. “You’re listening now, ain’t ya? ‘Cause Democrats are so yesterday.”
The song has over 100,000 views on YouTube.
Singing came first for Levy; politics came later. She writes all of her own songs with nothing but her thoughts and a keyboard, then sends them out to producers.
Her favorite of her songs? Levy paused for a second. Probably “Trump Is The How God is the Why.” Over a groovy, ’70s sound, she croons, “You know that Trump is a gangster. The man is a legend and legends don’t fall.”
Levy was born in Israel and grew up in Los Angeles. Like Jantz, Jimmy Levy and Jesslee, her career began in a mainstream direction: She performed on “American Idol” and later got offered a record deal. But everything fell through after 9/11 happened, she explained. Then she got married and had three kids, one of whom has special needs. She put music aside for years, devoting herself to raising them.
Levy had joined the pro-Trump movement in Los Angeles but the city quickly felt too liberal for her. She moved to Boca Raton, where she has since made her musical return with MAGA. She met Jantz at a Republican event in Ocala and again a year ago at a Miami party with Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security advisor for 22 days before resigning over his relationship with a Russian ambassador and, after Trump’s loss in 2020, suggested that he suspend the constitution and declare martial law. Levy said the film’s creators wanted her to do a song for the “Flynn” movie soundtrack. Soon, they began to collaborate. Jimmy Levy also appears on the soundtrack.
The MAGA pop singer has around 70,000 followers on Instagram but only a couple thousand listens on her Spotify songs. Still, she doesn’t appear to wish for greater stardom or a more mainstream appeal. The political movement is what she cares about, she explained, so it’s what she sings about.
“I don’t care if I’m famous for that,” Hadas Levy said. “I have a few people that really like what I do and that’s what I do it for, really.”
Soon it was time for Levy to perform the national anthem at the Jupiter event. Across from her in the front, Jantz stood with his hand over his heart.
“Guess what guys, you don’t need Barbra Streisand,” Levy said afterwards before launching into a rendition of Streisand’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” referencing the fact that the singer said she’d leave the country if Trump is reelected. “Because I’m gonna take her place.”
“Take Cher too!” someone called out. Another chimed in, “And Taylor Swift!”
Hadas Levy sings the national anthem at the Jupiter watch party for the vice presidential debate as Jantz looks on in the front. (Shira Moolten/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Make America Gospel Again?
Jimmy Levy sat inside a Miami Beach recording studio on a recent hot afternoon wearing black from head to toe, his bright blue eyes obscured by thick black sunglasses. He brought with him a pop of color — a red hat that said in white letters “Make America Gospel Again.” His fade was freshly styled, including another spin on the slogan cut into the hair on the side of his head: MAHA, for Make America Healthy Again — a testament to his recent significant weight loss that was spurred by his intense spiritual beliefs.
Jimmy Levy shows his MAGA-inspired haircut at a recording studio in North Miami Beach. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
He also says he has never voted for Trump, or anyone at all. He isn’t registered. That might be a surprise to those scrolling past the photos he’s posted posing next to a thumbs-upping Trump and sitting inside a posh boat next to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Rather, Levy said the driving force for his music is not politics at all but his spiritual beliefs.
He identifies as a Messianic Jew, a controversial religious sect widely considered by Jews to be a form of Evangelical Christianity, though he said his family background is a mix of “Judaism with occultism.” His grandmother was psychic Micki Dahne, who he said “conjured” Elvis Presley’s ghost. He spoke often of “darkness” and “Satan stuff” that he has witnessed in the mainstream music industry.
Levy said his only goal was to write music. Among his more successful songs are “Welcome to the Revolution” and “This is a War.”
He believes there’s a spiritual war raging and that, like many other MAGA artists, his music describes fighting against evil forces often associated with the left.
“The language of either righteousness or conquering or the battle between good and evil, all that sort of stuff is so baked into the language of MAGA, that becomes part of the language of MAGA art,” said Patch, the music professor and author.
Levy says if Kamala Harris asked him to perform at an event, he would — only if it were a chance to sing gospel. Would he wear the new camo Harris-Walz hat for such a performance?
“I’d wear a camo Jesus hat,” he said.
Gospel recording artist Jimmy Levy at a recording studio in North Miami Beach on Wednesday, October 2, 2024. Levy is part of a new music scene that has emerged with MAGA support. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
A ‘Chillbilly’ trades mainstream for MAGA
As the movement grows, artists who at first chased mainstream success are continuing to transform into members of the MAGA genre instead.
Such is the case for Jesslee, a singer born and raised in Loxahatchee, a more rural part of Palm Beach County, who made a name for herself as the “chillbilly.” She’s only recently plunged into creating what she described as “political spiritual” music, she explained during a recent phone interview from her tour bus on the way to open the first day of the Cooter Music Festival in Inverness.
After appearing on the reality music TV show “The Voice” in 2018, piquing the interest of both Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson, Jesslee said she went to Nashville, equipped with newly acquired exposure and “hell-bent” on doing her “country music thing.” She slept on friends’ couches in Nashville as she networked and wrote music and performed showcases for labels, then moved there. The hustle eventually paid off: A major independent label offered her a deal about two years ago.
Jesslee, before her political songs, has sung about slow-moving, small-town life in the same vein as any pop country artist on the radio. The lyrics and music video for “Chillbilly” are characteristic of quirky pop country that often jokingly leans into stereotypes: As she sings, Jesslee saunters down the street in an American flag bikini top while walking a pink-tutu-wearing goat on a leash, calling herself “a redneck Marilyn Monroe.” She sips beer out of a giant martini glass.
As she worked through her contract, Jesslee said she became more religious and wanted to “have a bigger purpose” with her music. She decided to go independent and leave the label, she said, and now, she’s just beginning to venture into the realm of political music.
Her newly released song “I’m Seeing Red” has a staunchly Republican and Christian message. She performed it at the recent “America First Music Festival” in Jupiter, along with the yet-to-be-released “Clown Town.”
“I feel like I’m finally letting it all out,” Jesslee said. “I’ve never felt this sense of freedom in my life before.”
The song is a play on the “anger” the MAGA movement has felt since the last election, she said, and also Trump’s popularity. Jesslee belts in the chorus: “I’m seeing red, from the hills to the woods to the hood, I’m seeing red. Taking back what they took.”
The idea came to her after the first attempted assassination of Trump. She said once she saw the news, she called her manager and, in expressing her anger, used the “seeing red” phrase. Throughout the day, the idiom stuck in her head and on social media, where she said she saw comment after comment of people supporting Trump.
“This is, very much so, my first political statement song at all,” she said.
When Jesslee decided to publicly reveal her political stance, she said she was prepared to lose tens of thousands of her social media followers. Only a couple hundred unfollowed, she said. Three years ago, she said, she would have been concerned about losing popularity. But not now.
In several recent videos shared on her Instagram, she sports an all-red, all-leather, Coyote-Ugly-esque outfit with cross-shaped earrings and a MAGA hat to promote the new song. In one, she monologues before jumping into the chorus: “I warned y’all once before, and some of you guys didn’t wanna listen. So let’s try again. If you ain’t votin’ red, keep on scrolling. You ain’t gonna like what I have to say.”
One commenter wrote under a recent video: “Jess you need to be performing this at a Trump Rally! I may be able to make that happen if you haven’t already!! The song is revolutionary!”
Still, she plans to return to mainstream after “Clown Town.”
Will MAGA music survive?
The very themes MAGA music embodies could hinder its expansion: It feeds off of controversy and a counterculture vibe, but that makes it harder for it to reach mass audiences. The lyrics might appeal more to older people, but the pop and hip hop sounds jive with younger generations of fans.
Patch compared MAGA music to other political anthems like George W. Bush’s use of “Only in America” by Brooks and Dunn.
“MAGA world has yet to produce a song that feels like that but that is mainstream enough to really be a cultural lingua franca for any set of 20,000 people,” said Patch. The counterculture appeal of the MAGA music scene thrives on the idea “that you’re not a giant multi billion dollar industry,” he added. “But that makes it difficult to have a singular song that most people know.”
Then there’s the question of the movement’s reliance on Trump’s image and what the artists will write about should he lose the upcoming election or fade into irrelevance. For now, they say the movement will live on.
Jesslee said God will tell her what to do in the future of her career, once Trump is no longer in politics. “Cat’s out of the bag now,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s a movement, it’s the MAGA movement,” Hadas Levy said. “Obviously Trump is just one man.”
Jantz says he’ll continue making MAGA music long after Trump is gone.
“I do this for the people, I do this for the crowd that Trump can’t get,” he explained. “… At the end of the day it’s MAGA. MAGA is bigger than Trump. Trump created MAGA, but MAGA’s gonna go on forever.”