FROM STUDIO TO DINING TABLE: THE (FOOD) CULTURE
Are artists particularly creative when it comes to cooking? We take a look around the kitchens of the art world, this time at the interface between hip hop and food.
By Julia KellerCornbread, collard greens, and mofongo
The interfaces between Rap lyrics and anything culinary go far beyond these kinds of double meanings, however. If you listen more closely, the Rap repertoire reveals countless references to African-American soul food cuisine: “It’s Christmas time in Hollis, Queens / Mom’s cooking chicken and collard greens” sang Run-D.M.C. in 1987, and typical ingredients of this kind of southern cuisine, such as cornbread, grits, collard greens, fried chicken, and black-eyed peas appear time and again in song lyrics – Goodie Mob, a Hip-Hop group from Atlanta, even called their debut album “Soul Food”. By naming certain dishes and ingredients, artists refer to their own cultural identity and indicate their belonging to a certain group. The Afro-Caribbean, Latin American, and African-American roots of Hip-Hop are made visible through references to the respective cuisines of the diasporas – including dishes such as West African stews, Puerto Rican mofongo, and Mexican tacos.
Cooking with cannabis and “ghetto gourmet”
After her megahit, Kelis attended renowned cookery school “Le Cordon Bleu”, published a cookbook, and opened a pop-up restaurant in London. In 2020, she was given her own cooking show on Netflix called “Cooked with Cannabis” in which she sampled – you’ve guessed it – meals seasoned with cannabis. Action Bronson is also a trained chef: His Rap career only took off when he broke a leg while working in his father’s restaurant and was thus forced to take a break. Since then, he has led a double life as a rapping cook and a cooking rapper, demonstrating his almost insatiable appetite on TV shows and even managing to write tasty song lyrics: “Got the lamb rack, pan-roasted, laced it with fennel. Little yogurt that been drizzled over might be a winner. Come and see me, Nona hand-makes the fettuccine.” For Flavor Flav, too, the name says it all: He attended cookery school before stepping into the limelight with Public Enemy. Coolio, meanwhile, not only developed his own cooking show (“Cookin’ with Coolio”), but also his own style of cooking, which he dubbed “ghetto gourmet”. In “Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers” Rev Run from Run-D.M.C. shows himself enjoying a Sunday feast with his family, with his wife Justine doing most of the cooking. One interesting example is Ludacris, who has even managed to market his complete lack of cooking skills on television (“Luda Can’t Cook”).
Roast chicken in buttermilk with added street cred
Yet it is undoubtedly Snoop Dogg who tops the list of Hip-Hop star TV chefs; he was signed in 2016 for a cooking show with one of the most famous personalities on US television: Martha Stewart. Although it seemed bizarre to show the then 75-year-old lifestyle entrepreneur Stewart wielding a wooden spoon alongside Snoop Dogg, who is three decades her junior and supposedly employs a full-time joint-roller, “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” was a massive hit with audiences – the chemistry between the two was unique and their exchanges extremely entertaining. Indeed, by Dogg’s own standards Stewart has even more street cred than he does: In 2004, she spent five months in jail for illegal stock trades. The recipe for fried chicken with buttermilk, which she learned there from a fellow inmate, is now one of Snoop’s favorite dishes.