Posted on 01/29/2004 4:24:34 PM PST by martin_fierro
Cadillac, Mercedes battle over hip-hop throne
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Move over Mercedes-Benz, Caddy is this month's king of cool, according to Americas trend-setting rappers and musicians.
AFP/File Photo
While the German luxury brand was the favoured status-symbol of rappers last year, a review of the top 20 best-selling records in the United States in January shows that Cadillac was the hottest set of wheels this month -- at least in the eyes of America's music-makers.
"Don't want to meet your daddy, just want you in my Caddy," runs a line from "Hey Ya!" a tune by hip-hop band Outkast.
"If you ain't got no man, hop up on my Brougham, I keep it pimpin like an old man," says rapper Twista in Slow Jamz.
General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac Escalade sport-utility has long been a hit with young, wealthy, black athletes and rappers, and now the brand appears to be flavour of the month with the hip-hop community.
The home-grown luxury brand got more namechecks than any other car brand in the lyrics of the top 20 tunes on the Billboard charts, according to Agenda Inc., a San Francisco, California, consulting firm.
"Cars are the ultimate status symbol," said Agenda's president, Lucian James, who explained that the hip hop community's love affair with all things bling-bling -- status symbols such as Hennessey liquor and Gucci clothing -- extends to 50,000 dollar vehicles.
In 2003, DaimlerChrysler Corp.s Mercedes-Benz had the most street-credibility of any brand, as measured by the Billboard barometer of popular culture. Cadillac placed a distant fourth.
The German automaker was quick to capitalise on its street creds, partnering with top rap artist Jay-Z in a promotion in November, using some of his lyrics in its advertising, and providing some of hip-hop's other biggest names with new cars for flashy music videos.
And while Cadillac may be top of the pile right now, Mercedes-Benz will remain top dog in the long run, James said.
"Mercedes touches more of the pop culture, because it reflects a more expensive lifestyle. It became a great metaphor of success all the way back in the early 90s when a popular rap group "N.W.A." sang about rolling in my Benzo.'"
Todays Caddys are a far cry from those of the past. And they are made in the USA.
At the January 1930 New York auto show, Cadillac presented the Sixteen, an astonishing marvel of that many cylinders and infinite dreams. Sixteen cylinders!
Who cared that the Cadillac V-type engine meant sixteen cylinders could fit into a hood no longer than a Duesenberg straight eight, or that the Sixteen produced fewer horses than the Duesy? Sixteen cylinders! Bad ass, automotive bliss.
The Sixteen launched Cadillac. From its inception in 1903, when backers of Henry Ford bailed on the dreaming, scheming perfectionist for the second time, and went to Detroit's best machinist, Henry Leland, to apply his "one-lunger," a brilliant and powerful one-cylinder engine, to a plain chassis, instantly creating one of the best cars of the day, to its 1909 test of stripping three cars into a common pile then reassembling them into three working cars and running them 500 miles, to its 1950s and 1960s supremacy in style, design, technology and comfort, Cadillac was the best built automobile in the world. Of all its cars, including the outrageous shark-finned 1959s, the 1930 Sixteen was the most outrageous, made altogether more outrageous for its timing, coming three months after the market implosion of October, 1929. That was not planned, as the Sixteen had been in development for three years. No matter, for over the next year the Sixteen sold out and drew attention and buyers to Cadillac dealers like nothing else, even amidst economic collapse.
Come the gas crisis, the EPA, and Jimmy Carter, Cadillac sank to what the moderns came to think of as a cushy, beastly, once-great old-folks' machine that once had a great name that no longer means anything.
Over the last two years we have seen a market repositioning the equal to the stunning 1930 introduction of the Cadillac Sixteen. In business, this is revolution. You can't buy it. And if you could, it wouldn't last. While advertising operates in image and slogans, it has to stand somewhere. No base, it floats away. Cadillac not only took on a new song, it has built the platforms for it.
Thus the hip-hop M-B v. Cadillac.
I'm so glad to have Cadillac back. While I enjoyed LL Cool J yapping about his three Rolls-Royces, and while I have no problem with Dr. Dre and his Benzo, R-R is too alliterative, and what's up with "Benzo," anyway? Mercedes-Benz just ain't lyrical, and no matter how Janis Joplin sings it, four syllables is plain. Compare it all to Snoop Dog''s "m-effin Cadillac" -- say it right, now -- and you'll see what I mean. Try "m-effin Mercedes-Benz." Only a good MC can say it right. It's not natural. Snoop's goes four syllables to three, with accents on each of the last three. M-B requires two down-beats, whereas Cadillac has but one, or, if properly pronounced, none, as it properly has but two consonants -- an alliterative cannonball. It's all abut the K's at either end.
No matter the sounds, as GM learned in the Eighties and Nineties, without the product, there's no word. Don't work to rap about your father's Cadillac. I'm gratified not only that Cadillac is back in the popular lexicon, but that, finally, an American automobile sales campaign with a car to match
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