Sittin on top of fifty grand in the Nautica Van
In this era of SLaBs and Bentley Coupes, I'd like to take a brief moment to reminisce over perhaps the oddest subject of whip-hop lyric braggadocio, the Mercury Villager Nautica Edition.
Before the Lincoln Navigator came onto the scene, Jigga pushed Grand Cherokees in music videos, SUVs held five people, and the only way for a rapper to transport large amounts of money, drugs, well-wishers, confidantes, or corpses was in police-beasts like the Chevy Suburban, or in humble minivans. Obviously, soccer-mommery is not a title that most rappers want to lay claim to, and mid-90s automoboasting was limited to coupes and sedans until the ever-iconoclastic Foxy Brown spit this post's title in her infamously mathmatics-heavy verse on "Affirmative Action."
Sleek styling aside, the appeal of the van, assuming she even owned one, must have surely stemmed from its reliable Japanese drivetrain (it's actually just a Nissan Quest - my first car - in disguise) and the trim package from Not-ica - as in Not Hilfiger or Polo - which included pinstripes along the bottom of the side panels and two-tone seats with sailboats on them. So enthralled was the Ill Na-Na that she mentions the van again in Kay Slay mixtape banger "Cruel Summer." Holy shit! The only other artist I could find who even references it at all is Cash Money second-stringer Mac, who claims on "Tank Dawgz" to have dead bodies stashed in his.
This automotive equivalent of a Sperry Topsider will always have a place in my heart, and in hip-hop, as a landmark symbol of the first preppy era when fake Gucci was played out and real Gucci was not readily affordable to most rappers, and as an enduring sign of Foxy Brown's questionable taste, in case she should ever cease to be one herself.


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