This rapper has the Secret Service on his tail thanks to Malia Obama

There’s nothing the Secret Service won’t do to keep the president safe. And that includes landscaping.
Last year, Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$, a member of the New York hip-hop collective Pro Era, experienced an overnight surge of government-level interest when a picture of Malia Obama wearing a Pro Era T-shirt began circulating online. A mutual friend of Barack Obama’s older daughter and the collective had apparently leaked the picture, and Joey (real name Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott) realized that he had become a person of interest to the president’s men. On the plus side, he got some gardening done for free.

“There was a tree outside my door that shaded my whole house,” he tells The Post. “It had been there for years. But when that s–t with Malia went down, the tree was gone,” he says with a laugh. “The timing was too suspicious. I guess they [had] to get clearer pictures!” He also claims that his phones have been tapped ever since, but remarkably, he doesn’t seem overly concerned about Big Brother watching. “It’s all good. I’m only doing positive things!”
His latest project doesn’t require a telephoto lens to monitor. He has a recurring role in Season 2 of USA Network’s “Mr. Robot” (which began on Wednesday), playing the “Seinfeld”-obsessed Leon, a friend of lead character and vigilante hacker Elliot (Rami Malek). “This show had made me more paranoid than I already was,” he says, laughing again.

Joey, 21, says that acting was a major passion for him as a teen, but he only played a bit part in a high school production of “Alice in Wonderland” before music got in the way and hip-hop began dominating his life.

On the last day of his junior year at Midwood’s Edward R. Murrow High School, in 2012, he dropped his first mixtape, “1999.” It was praised for its classic, ’90s-influenced production and smart lyricism. After a summer tour with Juicy J, he went back to school with a newfound stardom. “When I started senior year, school was unbearable,” he says. “Kids would be taking pictures of me in the hallways. It got pretty out of hand, so I had to get my mom to pull me out so I could finish my last year online.”
Another mixtape (2013’s “Summer Knights”) and last year’s full-length debut, “B4.DA.$$,” followed. But the plan was to use his music career to leverage an acting role — and it’s come to fruition with “Mr. Robot.” The surprising White House endorsement certainly didn’t hurt his ambitions.
“I’d love to thank Malia in person,” says Joey. “It’ll be a weird encounter, because the Secret Service guys are gonna be there, and they’re gonna be tapping the whole conversation. But nonetheless, I’m down!”