Pusher Man

 Biggie's St. Ides Commercial (1995)

I am a huge fan of all hip hop. Rapping is especially important to me, and I enjoy all sub-genres. I've become more aware of the product placement within a lot of artists tracks, and wanted to look into it a little further. The concept of product placement is clearly nothing new, especially not in the rap universe. Also, simply using a brand name is not always an act of promoting the brand. It can also be way of tying oneself to the social status the brand holds. The producer Timbaland or Rick Ross's label Maybach records serve as good examples. 

There have been some major deals throughout the history of rapping, with one of the largest early payments, and a later shoe line, going to Run-DMC for the classic "My Adidas". Many other artists in the early stages of rap would name drop products, and later receive money from said company as a thanks for the promotion. These deals were usually not agreed upon in advance of the recording, rappers were simply versing about products they were fans of and companies that stood as status symbols. Currently, almost all major hip hop stars engage in some type of product promotion, and frequently appear in advertisements. Kurtis Blow's 1986 Sprite commercial was one of the first direct promotion of a product by a rapper.

 Needless to say, Blow's the man

This later led to some artists realizing the potential gain from name dropping, and consciously trying to get the attention of a brand by consistently mentioning it on tracks. In my opinion, some of B.O.B.'s work seems to be trying to gain corporate attention. In the track "Fly Like Me", B.O.B mentions LRG, Creative Recreations, Cadillac, Dodge Charger, Maybach, Moschino, Academik, Oakley, and Roland TR-808 (drum machine)! While B.O.B. is all over the place with his company choices, others narrow the selection down, and have been met with mixed results. After Jay-Z gained the attention of Cristal, they asked him to stop mentioning their product, and even went as far to say (when asked if the presence in hip hop culture was harmful to the brand) "What can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it". Jay-Z claimed racism, and when reading the details, it seems that may not be far off.

This discrepancy between promoting brands for little or no return, and sometimes even negative responses, has led to the latest trend in rap, where artists use their star status and verses to promote their own brands. After the Cristal fiasco, Jay-Z stated he would never drink Cristal again and invested in Armand de Brignac, commonly referred to by Hova as "Ace of Spades." Jay now pulls an estimated 4 million dollars yearly from the sales of Armand, and is also responsible for it's rising popularity. Diddy owns a huge portion of the vodka brand Ciroc, and acquired it simply by pledging to promote the company. Many other rappers own shares of large scale brands, which reminds me of a favorite Jay-Z line, off the Kanye track "Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix)", "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business...man"