January 15, 2003

full circle
by oliver wang

Drunken masters

LONG BEFORE SPRITE , Burger King, and Nike tapped hip-hop to sell product, St. Ides had rap in the can. From the early to mid 1990s, the St. Ides Brewing Co., maker of St. Ides malt liquor, produced a series of radio and television ads that tapped rap's biggest stars to hawk its "Crooked I" brew. At one time, the only way you could find one of those funky St. Ides commercials was by scanning the radio and TV waves. Now DJ Drank has made it easier for you by compiling 30 of the ads for his Greatest Malt Liquor Hits (Hip Hop History Series, vol. 1).

What is nominally a novelty item actually flushes out an unlikely history. An entire evolution of rap sound and style is captured in the 30 spots, reflecting in particular the rise of the West Coast's gangsta rap. It's not that malt liquor was a uniquely California vice, but rappers like Too $hort and NWA had long hyped the potency of 40-ounce brews before ever getting paid for the promotion. That instant fit partially explains why most rap fans never ridiculed the St. Ides ads despite their crass call to consumerism – pitching soft drinks seemed soft, but rapping about a 16-proof beer jibed with gangsta rap's "I don't give a fuck" attitude.

It also helped that St. Ides's San Francisco-based marketers wisely distinguished their ads from hackneyed, hip hop-inspired ones that used limp DJ scratches and laughable jingle raps. Instead, their spots were essentially one-minute songs, produced early on by rising Los Angeles beat-making talent including DJ Pooh and E-Swift and featuring entertaining rhymes from the likes of King Tee and Ice Cube. Not surprisingly, the campaign's success in finding a willing audience among rap fans fueled more than just alcohol consumption. From the very beginning, controversy surrounded the ads as community leaders and health officials lambasted the campaign for using hip-hop to glamorize liquor to underage, urban youth. Several rappers also vocally came out against the ads, most notably Public Enemy's Chuck D, who sued St. Ides's parent company, the McKenzie River Corp., for illegally using his voice in one of the early spots.

There's little question that the criticism was well earned. In hindsight, it's unbelievable some of the spots ever aired to begin with. One of the most notorious pairs of ads finds Ice Cube promoting St. Ides as a sexual aid, rapping in one spot, "Get your girl in the mood quicker / Get your jimmy thicker / With St. Ides malt liquor," and in another boasting, "S-T crooked I / D-E-S / Guaranteed to get a big booty undressed." Elsewhere, Cube's protégé Yo Yo argues for dubious gender equality: "Back up off my tip / To me you're just shooting your lip / Ain't nothing wrong with a woman taking a sip."

Yet, it's the very brazen, outrageous nature of these ads that makes them such a guilty pleasure. What they hawked was reprehensible, but the pitches themselves were the work of insidious genius. They closely followed rap trends and took on different fads and stars. For example, the company understood the appeal of battle raps and early on nudged its advertising team to go after its main competitor, Olde English 800, a.k.a. "8 Ball." In one spot, for example, Ice Cube raps, "I ain't down with the beer called the O-E / 'Cause I'm OG / Ice Cube / Down with the S-T."

By 1992 and '93, the ads expanded beyond L.A. with the most unlikely of pitchers, new-school lyrical god Rakim, who recorded a pair of ads, boasting in his signature flow, "One quart and my thought's hip-hop-related / Write a rhyme and my pen's intoxicated." St. Ides also hit up the South, with three ads from the Geto Boys and Scarface, only to return to Cali in time to milk the G-Funk era with spots from Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, and MC Eiht. One of the last ones, likely recorded in 1995, finds Method Man, Ghostface Killah, RZA, and other Wu-Tang Clansmen doing up St. Ides Shaolin-style.