Too Much Cognac Makes Jong Ill

Evening all. It struck me on the morning commute how surprisingly powerful subliminal advertising is. I’m not talking about hidden messages when you play records backwards at 45rpm, or the arrow in the FedEx logo (yeah I know, I didn’t notice it either for about 21 years). I’m talking about explicitly naming brands within songs. 

The joys of driving to work via Shurdington village is that the fifteen sets of traffic lights give you ample time to ponder all sorts of useless trivia. I soon came to realise between the permian and triassic ages which occur between red and yellow that Hennessy brand Cognac (of which I am a fan) is mentioned by name in a shockingly large number of rap songs which I have been exposed to (probably the reason why I’m a fan). This isn’t me just making it up. It’s so true...it’s even on Wikipedia. Tupac Shakur, Sean Paul, Fifty Cent, Eminem, Dr Dre, Three Six Mafia...the list of Hennessy Cognac advocates is extensive albeit misogynistic. I don’t claim to understand why this particular brand of an unpopular liqueur is so popular with commercial rappers, I’m guessing it’s only because it rhymes with more words than ‘Courvoisier’ or ‘Remy Martin’?!

Rappers and ‘gangstas’ propagate a life in which they’re surrounded by homies, guns, mansions, bitches and bling but they ain’t got nuffin on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. 

 “So if you never call me I'll be somewhere down in Tennessee

Washing away my sorrows in a cold cup of Hennessy.”

If this is the best you can do gentlemen, you so called ‘poets of the street’, you better pick another beverage to market; not only because the rhyme is shoddy but because the etiquette is aaaallllll wrong. Brandy should be sipped at one’s leisure and consumed from a well rounded glass and held; to ensure that it is warmed to room temperature thus magnifying layers of flavour for the palette. It’s prestigious Cognac not Um-Bongo you Philistines. And also...one cup? Pffft, you can tell they were never undergraduates. Mr Jong-Il (this is where the colloquial expression “illin” should’ve come from) imports $800,000 worth of the stuff a year. A fact which moves him from being associated with ‘despots’ and more with ‘man-points’.

So the next time you see a rap video with some half-naked delinquent ‘pimping’ it, pretending to look tough; remember that a 5’ 2” haggard-looking man in big glasses outdrinks him, has a DVD collection 20,000 strong and controls the lives of 24 million people. Less ‘keeping it real’ and more ‘living the dream’. 

I must add here that I do not advocate North Korea’s foreign policy, or its existence for that matter. I do however hold the belief that marketing should be left to professionals and that rappers should start using words like ‘subsequently’, ‘lobotomy’, and ‘hysterectomy’ instead of tarnishing a great brand’s image. To be fair, if Eminem manages to rhyme the word hysterectomy in his next single I’ll buy him a bottle of Cognac and take it all back.  

(In regards to my previous post; the honourable mention goes to Mr D Harris who suggested GIN Stefani.)