The rap song Anthony Bourdain always thought about while driving on the West Coast
Beginning in the 2000s, iTunes used to ask different celebrities to select a playlist of their favourite songs to present to the public, and among the stars to do this was the late Anthony Bourdain, who, in 2012, used his selections to reveal his taste for rap music.
Bourdain, the celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian who sadly died in 2018, was a big music fan, especially fond of punk – his 2006 book, The Nasty Bits, was dedicated to Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee of the Ramones, while he was also known to enjoy the likes of Dead Boys and The Voidoids.
In his TV shows, Bourdain frequently interviewed punks and other rock musicians, like Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and members of Queens of the Stone Age, some of whom actually wrote and performed the theme song for his programme Parts Unknown.
But Bourdain was a great hip-hop fan, too, and he also invited some of its stars onto his show – among his interviewees on Parts Unknown were Lupe Fiasco and Questlove from the Roots, who is himself a great culinary enthusiast and food writer.
Bourdain also dedicated an entire episode of Parts Unknown to the culture of the Bronx, in which he spoke with hip-hop pioneers Melle Mel and Afrika Bambaataa, who died in April 2026 – Bambaataa, the founder of the Zulu Nation, is a controversial figure nowadays, with accusations of sexual assault having come to light, and these allegations only became widely known a couple of years after the Bronx episode of Parts Unknown had been aired.
The broader point is that Bourdain was a great hip-hop fan, and he did his part to highlight its culture through his own work. Rap music may not have been his primary musical love, but he certainly had a passion for it – and that was evident within his iTunes playlist selections.
Sitting among the more predictable choices of the Ramones, Iggy & The Stooges, and Mark Lanegan, a couple of rap songs were highlighted by Bourdain. He picked out Kanye West’s ‘Monster’, which Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver also jumped onto. But there was a West Coast classic, too, that he loved.
Snoop Dogg’s second single from Doggystyle, his debut album, was ‘Gin and Juice’, a track that is now considered to be an out-and-out classic, as the Dre-produced song is the archetypal G-funk number, perfectly evocative of the Californian sunshine.
Bourdain, who was born and raised in New York, seemed nonetheless to hold a soft spot for the other coast, and this song brought that out of him, with him saying, “I can’t drive down a street on the West Coast with the top down without thinking about this tune.”