“I’ll have what Drake’s having” will soon be a phrase you can mumble awkwardly at parties.
During NBA All-Star Weekend, the rapper announced his new liquor brand, Virginia Black Whiskey, through a mysterious Instagram post that promised the drink would complement all your accomplishments perfectly.
“After that legendary moment what else is there to do but celebrate with class,” the post pondered vaguely.
Of course, for Drake, the announcement follows a year worth celebrating: 2015 saw the release of a platinum album and an offhand collaboration with Future that spawned multiple radio hits. Not to mention “Hotline Bling,” which invaded airwaves worldwide and served as the soundtrack to parties everywhere, from your friends’ houses to upscale clubs filled with blacklights and black dresses.
While a liquor brand seems like an obvious way for Champagne Papi to celebrate (hey, wait a minute …), it also serves as something more — a hip-hop status symbol. In fact, the most surprising part of Drake getting into the alcohol market might be that it took this long.
Rappers and alcohol go together like, well, you’d expect rappers and alcohol might: really well. In addition to rapping about drinking (a lot) — see Gucci Mane’s “Wasted” — they also have a penchant for creating, owning and sponsoring liquor brands of their own. If they’re doing it right, rappers aren’t the only ones in the club gettin’ tipsy.
It’s a tradition that’s been around since hip-hop’s earliest mainstream successes. One of the earliest alcohol shoutouts in a rap track was the Beastie Boys’ hit “Brass Monkey,” which championed the cocktail of the same name — a combination of Olde English and orange juice. And who could forget The Notorious B.I.G.’s commercial for St. Ides malt liquor?
“I used to be a hustler, now I’m a 22-brew guzzler/ Other beers I’m not lovin’ ya/ Forget the great taste that’s less filling/ I’d rather have some Ides and some dimes in the crib chillin’,” he rapped in a black-and-white television spot.
And of course, there are the hip-hop staples, rapper/drink combos so classic they’re like cocktails themselves. Diddy and Cîroc, Nas and Hennessy, 50 Cent and #EFFENVODKA (nah, keep trying, 50!). It’s iconic relationships like these that have all rappers with a record deal and a debit card trying to start their own brand of alcoholic beverages.
It makes sense that not all of these attempts are successful. How many people do you know who regularly drink Pharrell’s fruit-flavored cream liqueur, the intriguingly titled “Qream”? Probably no one, considering the drink was killed in 2012 after just two years on the market.
If these brands have the potential to do poorly — though Pharrell blames Qream’s failure entirely on the drink company he partnered with — then why do rappers insist on producing bottle after bottle of these liquors, filling their lines with not-so-subtle rapvertisements?
Simply because it’s the thing for rappers to do. It’s the same reason so many female pop stars have perfumes (and Britney Spears has many). Regardless of how well they perform, these products expand the artists’ brands and can serve as a bridge from the music industry to the world of business.
So when Drake’s Virginia Black Whiskey officially hits the shelves of advertisement-plastered liquor stores in the near future, it’s set to be a lot more than a celebratory shot — it’s one of Drake’s first steps into the rap mogul arena. And while the whiskey might have fans sloppily doing the “Hotline Bling” dance on Friday nights, the status that comes with it will have Drake dancing with the hip-hop elite.
