♪ Rolls-Royce pull up ♪
♪ Black boy hop out ♪
♪ I was riding in the Ghost with the ghost gun ♪
♪ Seen you out ♪
♪ I just arrove in a Rolls ♪
♪ I just came up in a Wraith ♪
(Narrator): Rappers love to mention Rolls-Royce.
According to Bloomberg, from 2014 to 2017,
the top 20 songs on the Billboard Hot 100
mentioned Rolls-Royce more times than any brand,
including other luxury car companies like Porsche,
Lamborghini and Ferrari.
So what makes Rolls-Royce so special
and how did it become so popular in rap?
The obvious answer is that it's luxurious.
Just look at customization options,
like the starlight headliner, Bespoke audio system,
and champagne cooler,
and it'll become clear why the price of a Rolls-Royce
can fluctuate from 300K to nearly half a million dollars,
but there's something more here that isn't superficial.
I listen to hip-hop every day.
So I started writing down every time I heard Rolls-Royce
mentioned in rap lyrics
and it turns out Rolls-Royce is everywhere.
But what I found most surprising was that mentions
went back further than the nineties,
and even the eighties.
Released in 1979,
"Rapper's Delight" is arguably the first commercially
successful hip-hop record,
but that's not the only important thing about that year.
1979 also marks what is most likely the first ever mention
of Rolls-Royce in hip-hop history.
It's on the track "Superrappin'"
by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Around '79, many hustlers drove Cadillacs.
So the Cadillac was the premier car.
The Mercedes-Benz was like,
"Yo, you on some other level driving a Benz."
(Narrator): That's Mark Skillz,
a hip-hop writer and historian who has interviewed
many of the genre's pioneers and has documented
the origins of hip-hop for the past 18 years.
I've done my own research. Okay.
And I can't think of anyone that was driving a Rolls-Royce.
It was not a common car on the street.
Mentioning Rolls-Royce in an early record like this
was like untouchable luxury.
(Narrator): In the late seventies,
the only people you'd see driving Rolls-Royces
were aristocratic elites.
Take Queen Elizabeth, who was often chauffeured
in a Phantom IV. A luxury vehicle that was exclusively built
for the British Royal family and heads of state.
So even before the birth of hip-hop in the seventies,
Rolls-Royce had a reputation as a status symbol.
So why did Rolls-Royce start being mentioned
in the earliest days of rap?
To understand its inclusion in lyrics,
we have to break down why status symbols
became so prevalent
in rap music.
(Mark): The streets influenced hip-hop.
It wasn't...
nowadays, people think of it as the other way around.
No. The streets influenced the artists.
Before the '80s, wealthy crime bosses and flashy preachers
introduced the Bronx to status symbols like
tailor-made suits, jewelry, and of course,
luxury cars.
In the early '80s hip-hop became profitable
due to hits from artists like The Sugarhill Gang,
Kurtis Blow,
and Run DMC.
In the mid-late '80s rappers started to sign
record deals, and there was only one
thing to do with all of the extra cash.
Rappers started to emulate the larger than
life figures they saw in their communities
shifting rap into the braggadocious
genre we know today.
But one duo in particular, took things to a whole new level.
In 1988, Eric B. & Rakim were among the first to elevate
their rap personas by posing next to Rolls-Royces.
The luxurious car was featured on the cover
of their second studio album, "Follow the Leader."
(Mark): Eric B. said he got the Rolls-Royce because everybody else
was buying Mercedes-Benz and Jeeps.
And Eric was like,
"No, I want to separate myself from everyone else."
So he bought the Rolls-Royce.
(Tash): A lot of these rappers, you know,
they come from the streets, they come from nothing.
You want to attain nice things wherever you are
in whatever you're doing in life.
So that Rolls-Royce is definitely like that top tier,
"I made it here," car.
(Narrator): The two posing
with a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow,
marked he success of not only the duo, but rap as a genre.
Speaking of the success of rap, let's flash forward to 1997.
Diddy and Mase were at the top of the Billboard charts.
During that year,
they each had four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100,
the most top tens of any artists that year.
One of those hits, "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down,"
peaked at number one on the list
and spent sixteen weeks in the top ten.
And as Diddy struck mainstream success,
he celebrated it all in, you guessed it,
a white Rolls-Royce.
♪ Don't push us 'cause we're close to the edge ♪
(Narrator): In the iconic music video,
Diddy and Mase walk away
from a white Rolls-Royce Corniche in slow motion.
The imagery of the $156,000 vehicle exploding behind them
proved that the cost was nothing for a rapper as big as Puff.
(Datwon): In the '90s,
they're starting to take on these personas
of people that have a lot of money, a lot of power,
and a lot of influence.
And with those things,
you have to have the accessories to go along
with that status.
"If I'm a king and I'm a queen, then this is my chariot."
(Narrator): And it seems that '97 may have been responsible
for the spike of Rolls-Royce mentions in subsequent years.
Out of the seven rap songs
that mentioned Rolls-Royce that year,
five were on the Billboard weekly singles charts,
or were on albums that had a Billboard chart success.
Nothing shows the effect of this influence more than
Cash Money rap group, the Big Tymers,
who came out of the south in the early '00s
with a very different spin on luxury.
(Tash): I think the most iconic lyric that I ever remember
from the Big Tymers and Rolls-Royce is definitely
the "#1 Stunna" video.
♪ Come on, you know how slow the new Rolls-Royce be ♪
(Datwon): What Wayne was talking about is,
"I have the Rolls and you know how slow they be."
So I'm gonna get seen in this.
(Tash): when you usually picture somebody that has
these type of cars,
you'd see them suited up with a driver,
a chauffeur exiting them out.
But when you saw people like Mannie Fresh and Baby
and Lil Wayne and Juvenile,
these guys were just wearing baseball caps and white tees
and actually driving them.
They were breaking molds and stereotypes
of what you can do with these cars.
(Mark): They wanted to still retain the street flavor
and be in luxury,
because if you remember, you know,
Diddy in the white suits and Mase was in suits,
but the southern players, they were like,
"No, we're going to take this luxury as we are."
(Narrator): And as trap has emerged from the south
and taken over the charts,
Rolls-Royce has accompanied that ride,
just listen to the chart-topping Migos track,
"Bad and Boujee," and you'll hear offset mention:
♪ Pull up in Ghosts. Woo. ♪
♪ My diamonds a... ♪
(Narrator): I tabulated at least 338
studio-released hip-hop songs
from 1979 to 2017 that mentioned Rolls-Royce
or its other popular models.
Of course, this isn't an exact figure,
but it shows just how ubiquitous Rolls-Royce has become
in rap music.
(Datwon): People want the best of the best, man,
Rolls-Royce is that.
They only make so many per year.
It's a handcrafted vehicle.
It's from overseas.
It's like all the different checkpoints
and then the price point.
(Narrator): But these excessive price points
pale in comparison
to the new Rolls-Royce Boat Tail,
which in May of 2021,
broke the record for the most expensive new street legal car
ever, at $28 million,
and its creation may be hip-hop related.
(Datwon): The fact that they're like not just hip-hop
and R&B royalty,
but American royalty starting to become now.
The Boat Tail? That's when you know that you're uber rich,
when people are like, "Well, we know they got it." (laughs)
I think Rolls-Royce became the signifier of success,
especially in hip-hop because
it wasn't easily obtainable.
(Narrator): And the brand has played into this idea.
I reached out to a Rolls-Royce representative
to ask why they think they luxury brand is so influential
in hip-hop.
(Gerry): Rolls-Royce is known for being the best.
The one thing that
every Rolls-Royce patron has in common
is success.
It's not an item that you need.
No one needs a Rolls-Royce motor car.
It's something that everyone wants.
(Mark): Word spread through the street and it became
the ultimate symbol of luxury and affluence
and it's held its status ever since.
And it's not going anywhere.
Benz rhymes with so many things:
friends, lens, benz, again.
But don't get it twisted,
Rolls-Royce is still the one
that everyone loves to mention,
like that's the one.