Hov and Japanese Whisky
JAY-Z and Nas squashed their beef over fifteen years ago, but get a group of hip-hop heads of a certain age together and you’ll hear them (us) debating the winner as if the battle is still happening.1 It defined an era. It was the last battle that truly mattered in shaping the hip-hop landscape (an argument can be made for 50 Cent/Ja Rule, but the stakes there never felt as high; Drake/Meek Mill and Drake/Pusha T were entertaining, but didn’t carry nearly the same impact). In the post-Biggie/Pac world, it was the first clash of titans, and while anyone with memories of the violence of that time was anxious about similar tragedies befalling two more icons, JAY and Nas kept it on wax and re-ignited hip-hop’s competitive spirit. That they came together afterward to become friendly collaborators showed there is room for forgiveness, no matter how personal these spats can become.
Their latest collaboration, “SORRY NOT SORRY,” was recently released on DJ Khaled’s new album, KHALED KHALED. It’s fine. It sounds like exactly what it is: two semi-retired rap veterans reporting back from the other side of decades of success and wealth. Nas has transformed from ghetto griot to venture capitalist and dubbed himself “cryptocurrency Scarface.” I hope that works out for him. JAY is who he has always been, the king of status rap, but on the other side of fifty he sounds noticeably more relaxed, more content with showing than proving. “I like who I’ve become,” he says, and whatever your feelings about him, there’s something sweet in expressing his self-acceptance.
When I say JAY-Z is the king of status rap, I mean he has spent the bulk of his career curating hip-hop’s symbols of success. Hip-hop has always been a status game—for early DJs and emcees, it was about having records that no one else had or being the chief party rocker. As hip-hop moved into its commercial era, the symbols reflected the new influx of cash and street fantasies—Rolexes, fat gold chains, Benzes, all the things that only the drug dealers and pimps could afford and everyone around them then coveted. Influence from the rise of the south in hip-hop put an emphasis on rims and grills in the late 90s and early aughts. Every era has its own things.
JAY-Z has had the unique ability to dictate what those things should be for the whole culture. He doesn’t exert the same influence these days as he did ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago because he has aged out of the zeitgeist. Today’s fans aren’t his peer group and less likely to think of him as someone to emulate (and more likely to think of him as Beyoncé’s cheating husband). He’s an elder statesman, but within that shift he still holds a bit of sway as an aspirational totem, a goal to reach someday. And on “SORRY NOT SORRY” he’s added a new symbol to go along with rocking Tom Ford, million dollar artwork, and regretting not capitalizing the gentrification real estate market: Japanese whisky.
“Circular ice on Japanese whisky, on my mezzanine/Overlookin' the City of Angels, the angel investor in things”
With respect to its overall popularity, JAY-Z is actually behind the curve on Japanese whisky. Over the past decade or so demand for Japanese whisky has grown so much that the big distilleries shutdown a few of their brands temporarily in order to increase production, and what’s left on the shelves has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in price.
On the whole, Japanese whisky is still fairly young when compared to its global counterparts in Ireland, the U.S., and Scotland (from whom they borrow their spelling of “whisky” with no e). The country was introduced to whisky in the 1850s by U.S. Naval commander Matthew C. Perry. Propelled by Manifest Destiny, capitalism, and a belief it was the duty of the Western world to “civilize” the “backward” Asian nations, President Millard Fillmore sent Perry on a mission to force Japan to open up trade with the U.S. Japan had a 250 year policy of isolation in place, with only a few Dutch traders allowed to operate out of Nagasaki. Perry showed up and, threatening naval bombardment, forced the Japanese into signing a trade agreement. Amidst the imperialism, Perry gifted the emperor with a 110 gallon barrel of whisky.
Japan began importing whisky and making their own, though the homegrown stuff was whisky only in name and color, and what they had wasn’t all that popular. It wasn’t until Shinjiro Torii, a pharmaceutical wholesaler who had made a fortune producing Japanese port wine, and Masataka Taketsuru, a whisky loved who had studied organic chemistry at the University of Glasgow and worked in some Scottish distilleries, established a distillery in Yamasaki and began selling their Shirofuda whisky in 1929, that Japan had a true whisky to call its own. Taketsuru worked alongside Torii for a few years before striking out on his own, founding Nikka, while Torii changed the name of his distillery to Suntory, still the two biggest names in Japanese whisky.
They operated at a loss until World War II, when Japanese, U.S., and British soldiers all found a taste for their product. Both Suntory and Nikka got rich and were able to expand their domestic and foreign markets, even as the U.S. army reduced its presence.
Most people trace Japanese whisky’s introduction in Anglo popular culture to the 2003 film Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray’s character shoots a commercial for Suntory. That same year, Yamazaki 12 year (from Suntory) won a gold medal at the International Spirits Challenge, and the next year Hibiki 30 year won the same prize. In 2013, Jim Murray named Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask the best whisky in the world in his annual Whisky Bible (but don’t pay too much attention to that guy). The accolades have piled up, and as the prestige of Japanese whisky has skyrocketed so too has the demand, as Japan has become the third largest producer of whisky in the world. From 2015 to 2020, imports of whisky from Japan tripled, from $18.4 million to $67.4 million.
But because until just this year there were no regulations on what could be called Japanese whisky, a lot of what we’ve seen on the shelves labelled Japanese whisky has just been something someone has slapped a Japanese name on. Scotch and bourbon have always been tightly regulated, from what goes into the mash, to the kinds of barrel that can be used, and where it must be stored and bottled. Japanese whisky is catching up. In February of this year, the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association set down a group of guidelines for what constitutes Japanese whisky, including that it must be made of malted grains, distilled and bottled in Japan, stored in oak casks for at least three years (also in Japan), and the water used must be extracted from Japan.
My guess is JAY-Z has been drinking the good stuff all along. But who knows.
I can’t pretend to be an expert in Japanese whisky. I have one bottle of Yamazaki 12 that was gifted to me. It’s good. It has notes of ripe stone fruit, peaches and nectarines, as well as some floral elements and subtle vanilla. I’m rarely in the mood for it, but enjoy it when I am. I poured some while writing this.
I’m concerned, though, that the… fascination with Japanese whisky taking hold in the U.S. is similar to the fascination that has guided Western engagement with Asian cultures which has so often been dehumanizing. I worry that the whisky is becoming another place to mark Asian people as inscrutable, mysterious, or only existing in the background to Western fantasies. I’m paying close attention to the way Japanese whisky is discussed.
But it doesn’t surprise me that JAY-Z has now enlisted the spirit into his reserve of status symbols. It’s a little surprising he’s doing so publicly, as he’s the owner of a cognac brand, D’Usse, and he’s normally pushing that on us.2 But status is all about separation—you buy his cognac, he sips Japanese whisky, and the line between you is drawn. Until you’ve got a few bottles of Nikka of your own, then he’ll move on to something else. Status must always be reinforced.
FWIW, Nas won, even if he didn’t deserve to. “Takeover” was the superior record, but JAY’s response to “Ether” betrayed how much it got under his skin, and if there’s one thing you can’t do in a battle is respond from a hyper defensive, emotionally compromised position.
Nas mentions a different cognac on his “SORRY NOT SORRY” verse, Hennessy, which may well be the unofficial-official drink of hip-hop. He’s a brand ambassador there, so no shock, but interesting to bring up JAY’s competitor on this track. The beef is over, but the fire of competition is still there, even if it’s now on a rich people battlefield.