The best rap songs that mention Guinness
It may seem to veer into the realm of stereotyping and paddywhackery, but, factually, a shit-tonne of Guinness is downed on Saint Patrick’s Day every year. About 13 million pints can be expected to be sold on the day in America alone, according to Business Insider, which is about 819% more than on a typical day.
What Paddy himself would have made of that is an open question. He was, the lore has it, a member of a wealthy Romano-British family in the fifth century, before he was kidnapped, taken across the sea to Pagan Ireland, and enslaved. There he found God, and, in the years that followed, he escaped, became a priest, and duly set about spreading Christianity throughout the island. For that, he is considered to be Ireland’s patron saint.
The supposed date of Patrick’s death, March 17, was declared to be a Christian holiday in the 17th century, but the day wasn’t initially marked by people dressing in green and getting hammered. The Irish diaspora in the United States can be thanked for that particular innovation, after they started organising parades on Paddy’s Day that, soon, picked up a reputation for people getting pissed on the street.
The Irish, back in the homeland, only jumped on that swerving, drunken bandwagon later.
Guinness does particularly well out of Paddy’s Day, with rivers of the black stuff being poured every year. So, for the day that’s in it, here’s a look at some of the best rap songs that mention the drink in a verse. Some of the most iconic rappers to ever pick up the mic have done so.
5. Eminem – ‘Drug Ballad’
To be clear, the mentions of Guinness on this list won’t necessarily be positive. On ‘Drug Ballad,’ Eminem, embodying Slim Shady at his most brash, brings it up in the context of his problematic relationship with drink and drugs. After speaking about getting sick on a mixture of “Hen with Bacardi Dark,” Eminem also raps, “A couple of minutes that bottle of Guinness is finished / You are now allowed to officially slap bitches.”
The verse discusses how the drunken state induced by his bottle of Guinness makes Em feel like he has “the right to remain violent and start wildin’,” and to “start a fight with the same guy that was smart-eyein’” his woman. The song, despite having a sort of celebratory quality to it, lays out the bleakness of a drink and drug problem that can, at times, lead to violence. It is hardly a ringing endorsement of the stout, but so be it.
4. 50 Cent – ‘High All the Time’
In this song, in which 50 Cent boasts about being “high all the time,” because he “smokes that good shit,” he also discusses his hedonistic relationship to drink. At one stage, he describes himself sitting “in the crib sipping Guinness watching Menace,” presumably referring to the film Menace II Society, and the general idea imbued by the song is that of a man enjoying such riches and comforts that he can get drunk and high whenever he wants.
The rub is that it’s complete nonsense. 50 Cent has been very open about the fact he never drinks or smokes, and that the only reason he pretended to in his songs was to sell records. As he admitted in his fitness-themed book Formula 50, “I don’t drink and I don’t use drugs, and I didn’t back then, either. I put that joint on the first record because I saw artists consistently selling 500,000 with that content.” 50 Cent is a business man with questionable ethics, but he is not a Guinness drinker.
3. Wu-Tang Clan – ‘Cash Still Rules / Scary Hours (Still Don’t Nothing Move But the Money)’
The fourth track on Wu-Tang’s second album, Wu-Tang Forever, begins with Raekwon announcing, “Scary hours, no money out, smash the Guinness stout.” Unlike other rappers on this list, it seems that Rae actually does plainly enjoy a Guinness from time to time. There are reports out there of a gig he did in Dublin in 2015, during which he declared, from backstage, that he “got my Patrick’s Day green drawers on Dublin — get me a green Guinness.”
While ‘Cash Still Rules’ is the best Wu-Tang song to mention Guinness, it’s not the only one. On ‘Sound The Horns’ from the compilation album Wu-Tang Chamber Music, which, while not an official group release, did feature many of the members and affiliates, U-God raps of cracking “cans of cold Guinness.”
2. Mobb Deep – ‘Hell on Earth (Front Lines)’
Once again, Guinness comes out the worse for wear for being mentioned in this hip-hop classic. Not only does it feature on an almost apocalyptic song, in which Havoc and Prodigy discuss the intense violence that surrounds them in the projects, characterising their home as “hell on Earth,” Guinness is also explicitly described as having a “foul” taste.
In the third verse, Prodigy raps about a business operation being shut down and leaving “a foul taste in your mouth like Guinness.” All things considered, it’d be some achievement for Guinness’ PR people to spin that positively. Don’t expect this track in any of their future ad campaigns.
1. MF Doom – ‘Guinnessez’
MF Doom’s fifth album Mm..Food is a concept album about, as Doom explained to Spin in 2004, “the things you find on a picnic, or at a picnic table.” Food and drink items serve as metaphors on the album, with “Guinnessez,” as mentioned on the track of that name, representing the act of numbing the pain of a break-up with drink and drugs — “Morphine, pain killers, drugs and medicine / Anything just to forget the hurt.”
While he produced it, Doom doesn’t actually rap on ‘Guinnessez.’ He leaves the chorus to 4-Ize and the verses to the little-known Angelika, who laments that she “shoulda deaded it from genesis instead of hittin’ the Guinnesses,” implying that turning to religion would have been a better course of action than knocking back the Guinness to work through the pain. Again, Guinness doesn’t necessarily come out too great from this one, but it’s a wonderful song.