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| Popular rap artist, Fat Joe, poses for a Bacardi Rum advertisement featured in Vibe magazine, 2005 |
Rap music is one of the fastest-growing music genres of the past twenty years. Its quick trip from the streets to the charts was spurred by rapid commercialization of both the music and its artists. Although many consumer goods would eventually use rap music to promote sales, alcohol producers took an early interest in exploiting the marketing potential of the hip-hop aesthetic.
In the 1980’s, a controversial campaign for Saint Ides, a malt liquor boasting the highest alcohol content of any mass-produced beer, featured original raps by well-known groups and individual performers including EPMD, Geto Boys, Ice Cube and YoYo. These radio and TV advertisements—essentially one-minute songs—associated Saint Ides with explicitly sexual and violent themes. One example, a rap commercial by Ice Cube aired on MTV, claims that Saint Ides, “Gets your girl in the mood quicker.”
While broadcast ads for malt liquor and beer continue to use rap music, by the late 90's references to spirits and expensive champagne greatly outnumbered mentions of malt liquor and beer in rap lyrics. This change reflects a shift in marketing for high-end alcoholic beverages. Advertisers currently showcase products like Courvoisier and Cristal Champagne in trendy nightclubs and parties frequented by rappers and other celebrities. One example, a Busta Rhymes' hit titled “Pass the Courvoisier,” followed a whirlwind of celebrity studded Club CV (Courvoisier) parties in New York and Chicago. This type of highly targeted point-of-sale marketing helps to develop a popular following for the brand names that rap music artists promote in their lyrics but avoids the limited monitoring that tracks broadcast ads and other measured media.
Denise Herd, a professor of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered these and other changes in the role of alcohol in rap music when she analyzed the most popular rap music between 1979 and 1997. Among Herd’s findings are a dramatic increase in the prevalence of alcohol references in rap music songs between 1979 and 1997, a stronger focus on the use of hard liquor and champagne and a steep rise in the mention of brand names. Herd concludes that efforts to reduce the prevalence of alcohol in rap music should be developed.
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