Grammys are nice, Emmys are good and Oscars, well, who doesn’t want one? But Pusha T got the rarest hip-hop honorific this week when the Ukraine Ministry of Defense shouted out one of his lyrics during a briefing on Russian military losses in the country’s six month assault on the nation.
In a tweet on Wednesday (Sept. 7), the Defense ministry quoted Pusha’s line, “I put numbers on the board,” from the 2013 track “Numbers on the Board” off Push’s solo My Name is My Name album. The ministry noted that since the unprovoked assault launched on Feb. 24 (through Sept. 7), Russian forces have reportedly suffered nearly 51,000 personnel losses, as well as the destruction of 2,097 tanks, 4,520 armored combat vehicles, 1,194 pieces of artillery, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 156 air defense systems and 237 military jets and an almost equal number of helicopters.
The numbers on the board were indeed gaudy, prompting Push to respond, “Great taste in music for the win…”
It’s not the first time the Ministry of Defense has used a lyric to share updates on Russian combat losses in the war that has drawn near-universal condemnation from the world’s democracies, with recent tweets quoting Queen (“I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, I want it now”) and Bananarama (“It’s a cruel, cruel summer”), as well as the movies The Sixth Sense (“I see dead people”), The Big Lebowski (“This aggression will not stand, man”) and Rambo (“They drew first blood, not me”) and Shakespeare, among others.
Check out the Pusha-quoting tweet below.
Great taste in music for the win… https://t.co/GKG2V6Jc4S
— King Push (@PUSHA_T) September 7, 2022
