The Power of Name Dropping Fashion Brands in Songs
This week, while scrolling through my Instagram, I saw a video that Cardi B posted. The video was an answer for a tweet that stated information based on no real data with racist claims about black celebrities owning luxury brands. However, in her answer, Cardi B mentioned something else: name-dropping fashion labels in music and how that actually benefits the sales of these fashion brands — those being luxury or not.
I actually found that statement interesting and I decided to dive into the history of name-dropping fashion brands in songs and how that impacts real-life sales. What I found out? Well, a lot, including that this goes way back in time, it is mostly done in hip-hop and rap songs, and it can affect sales. So let me tell you all about name-dropping fashion labels in songs and how this actually impacts fashion brands in real life.
The History of Citing Fashion Brands in Rap and Hip-hop Songs
It was 1985 and English rapper Ricky D, later known as Slick Rick, released a song that would start a new trend in the music industry that, with the years, would transcend his music genre. The song was ‘La Di La Di’ and in it, he mentioned the fashion brands Gucci, Bally, and Polo. At the time, even though he made it cool to wear Bally after this song and with his styling, fashion brands didn’t really acknowledge him for it. Nowadays, in his 50s, the rapper is finally receiving credit from the fashion industry for the commoditized style he helped architect. But according to an interview he gave to WWD, at the time, his focus wasn’t even to be acknowledged by the brands:
“Nah. Nobody cared about working with the brands at the time. Everybody just wanted to be fly. You had to have some knowhow to go downtown to get Gucci, Louis [Vuitton], Fendi or Prada and that represented wealth and prestige. You respected the name, but the name wasn’t carrying all of the swag you had. You didn’t wear these designers to get them to notice you. You wore it for your peeps. It was like a mating call.”
Nowadays, the rapper, whose real name is Ricky Walters, is working with Bally, the same Swiss luxury brand mentioned in his song back in 1985. In 2018, he hosted a party at Bally’s store in Rodeo Drive to celebrate the 30 years this exact song and the album it was part of. “Who would’ve thought decades later, I’d be taking over the Bally store on Rodeo Dr.” tweeted Walters.
Ricky D started this trend of name-dropping fashion brands in Hip-Hop. Then, Hip-Hop influenced many other music genres such as R&B, Reggaeton, Brazilian funk, K-pop, Country, Pop, and others, which use the name-drop practice. But, if Ricky Walters took decades to receive recognition for his contribution to the fashion industry, nowadays, mentioning a fashion label in a song can quickly create a relationship between the artist and the brand.
But before we jump into that, I want to analyse the brand mentioning in songs a little bit more. Mentioning labels in singles goes from cars to alcohol. However, according to a study done by Clay Craig, Mark Flynn, and Kyle Holody, clothing and shoes are the most prevalent category. Rap is also the music genre that most mentions brands, with 73% of songs mentioning a label, according to the same study from 2017. At the end of 2019, Genius released a raking based on their data of the most mentioned brands in hip hop songs during the 2010s. From the top five brands in the ranking, four were from fashion (watch the full Genius video here):
Since 2017 the name-dropping of labels in rap songs drastically increased. Jian Deleon, the editorial director of Highsnobiety, an internet publication that covers the intersection of high fashion and street culture, stated that this practice started as an “outward display of wealth”, but it eventually became a reality to these artists. “Now there are whole songs where people are just rapping about what they own. They’re rapping about what they just bought,” explained Dan Hall, who directed music videos for rappers like 2 Chainz and Big Krit. In 2018, brands were mentioned in songs more than ever. At this year, the three most-referenced fashion brands — Fendi, Balenciaga, and Gucci — were called out 664 times in Rap and R&B songs, a drastic increase from the 31 collective mentions in 2010. But what changed so much at the end of 2017?
The Fashion Industry Reaction to the Rise of Hip Hop
The popularity of Hip-Hop changed. In December of 2017, something changed in the music industry in the US. For the first time in history, Hip Hop surpassed Rock as the most popular music genre in the US. With Hip Hop artists taking over charts, eventually, the fashion industry saw the potential of collaborating with them. Rappers and other Hip Hop artists were being seen in the front rows of fashion shows, staring fashion campaigns and covering fashion magazines, things rarely seen before 2017. As a famous article from BoF stated in 2018: Rappers became fashion’s new royalty. As the fashion consultant Aleali May stated:
“Hip-hop artists are storytellers and news reporters of the times, [and] with hip-hop being the number one music genre, it proves that hip-hop artists drive culture.”
The industry of Hip Hop also started to have more women in powerful positions. Artists like Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Megan Stallion took over the music charts. And with the popularity of Hip Hop increasing, so did the mentions of fashion brands in singles. But of course, with rappers becoming mainstream, fashion brands started to acknowledge these name-drops like never before.
The Marketing Side of Namedrop in Songs
The first time a brand decided to collaborate with a rap artist because of a song in which they mentioned the label was in 1986. Run-DMC released the single ‘My Adidas’ paying homepage to their iconic artist uniforms that had a style closer to the people that listened to them at the time.
“Run-DMC gave hip-hop its own look by not dressing like stars, but instead just dressing like the community that the music came from,” says Mr Kabango.
The song was recorded without Adidas’s knowledge or consent, but the sportswear brand rapidly offered its official patronage after one of its executives witnessed the entire crowd hold their shoes aloft during a performance of the song at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Run-DMC closed a US$1 million contract with the German sportswear giant and released its own signature line. It was an industry first.
Time passed and this got more normal. But the luxury sector was still not fully open to doing business with artists just due to songs where they were mentioned. But soon things got too big to be ignored. In 2017, Cardi B released her first hit song ‘Bodak Yellow’, which reached the number 1 position on the Billboard 100, the first solo female rapper to attain the position since Lauryn Hill with ‘(Doo Wop) That Thing’ in 1998. In the mega-hit, Cardi B mentions the famous luxury shoewear brand Christian Louboutin in the verse “These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is bloody shoes.” Well, this brief mention of the French brand generated an estimated US$4.5 million media value for Christian Louboutin in 2017, according to the Business of Fashion. On top of that, Louboutin had a 217% spike in searches online between the release of the song in June until November the same year.
Louboutin didn’t work with the artists, but the next time Cardi B mentioned a brand in a song, she profited from it. In 2018, the rapper released another hit song called ‘I Like It Like That’. In the single, the lyrics made a tribute to the bestselling Balenciaga’s sneakers of the time at verses “I like those Balenciagas/ The ones that look like socks”. I couldn’t find data to state how much media the song generated for Balenciaga, but it seems like she brought results, because, in 2020, the rapper starred Balenciaga’s fall campaign, being the first celebrity in a major campaign from the brand since creative director Demna Gvasalia took the reigns in 2015. My guess is that Balenciaga would not work with a celebrity that couldn’t bring them sales.
Balenciaga 2020 fall campaign with Cardi B
The song ‘Versace on the Floor’, performed by Bruno Mars and that had Zendaya featured in the music video is another case that resulted in a long-term relationship between the artists and the brand. Donatella Versace was involved in the styling for the video clip, to which she created custom outfits for the celebrities. After the release, Donatella Versace released a video in which she and a team of models lip-synced to the song. The glamorous production came with the caption “To my special friend Bruno Mars”. Since then, the singer has collaborated with Versace on multiple occasions.
Indeed, since Ricky Walters in the 80s, fashion brands changed the way they approached name-dropping in songs, especially when it comes to urban rhythms. In fact, a lot of questions started to be raised if brands were actually paying musicians to namedrop them in their lyrics. In marketing terms, name-dropping brands in songs would be called a type of product placement. While product placement in movies and music videos is easily identified as an ad, only mentioning the label’s name is subtler. According to an article from The Guardian, these deals do happen and are never made public, which makes it hard to point them out. Back in 2000, Kluger Agency, which works with this type of product placements, accidentally opened this backstage of transactions to the world. The agency mistakenly sent an e-mail to Jeff Crouse of the Anti-Advertising Agency and Double Happiness Jeans offering a deal, according to Wired. More specifically, the start of the email went exactly like this:
“I’m writing because we feel you may be a good company to participate in a brand integration campaign within the actual lyrics of one of the worlds most famous recording artists upcoming song/album.”
The incident generated many other controversies and even lawsuits, but that’s another story. What is interesting to pinpoint here is that from the perspective of law, in most countries songs are not required to point out which words are parts of an advertisement. This scenario creates the perfect space for brands to discretely be remembered by consumers through songs. And it is not surprising that artists are tapping into this stream of income, once albums don’t generate the same amount of money they use to and tours usually come with high initial investment. Namedrop could be a great way for artists to make more money. However, it is common knowledge that usually artists are the ones that decide to include the brands’ names in their songs. If there is a deal being made, the most common practice is to contact brands that the singers would want to include in their music anyways.
The Power Of Name-Dropping is Massive
Finally, it is safe to say that name dropping passed the borders of Hip-Hop, Rap, and R&B, becoming an expected practice in many other music genres around the world. Still, the practice of mentioning brands in songs will always be connected to its roots: rappers. The reason for why this started was perfectly explained by Zadie Smith in a profile of Jay-Z for the New York Times:
“Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.”
Now, these artists are the culture and create it. It’s no surprise that when they talk about a brand in a song, this will have a real-life impact on media coverage, brand recognition, and sales of the label. I brought a few examples from the past and present, but there are so many iconic others. From ‘Them Jeans’ to ‘Gucci Gang’, namedrop is a trait of Rap and Hip-Hop that taken over and shapes a part of fashion consumerism nowadays, especially in the United States. With that, fashion brands started to recognize more the relevancy of being mentioned by these artists. However, David Fischer, founder and chief executive of streetwear and youth culture title Highsnobiety, warned that this new approach works if it looks legitimate. “Shoppers smell bullshit, so the minute it’s perceived as a marketing thing, it’s not going to work,” he explained.
It needs to be legitimate and consumers can see when is not, even though I had no idea singers sold spaces in their lyrics to brands until writing this article. So Yeah, at the end of the day, Cardi B was right in the video she posted on Instagram. Having Hip-Hop artists wearing, talking about, and buying from a fashion brand brings more value to the company. And mentioning them in their songs? If done right, that can apparently substitute a US$4.5 million advertisement.
Ps: For fun, I made a Spotify playlist with songs that name-drop fashion brands.
Check it here!
Check more content or subscribe to moderated newsletter by clicking here.
If you liked the content, don’t forget to leave a clap :)
About the author behind the text
About the artist behind the illustrations
If you want, you can send suggestions, comments, or a hi to luizapplima@gmail.com
