Sprite has had a relationship with Hip-Hop for years. They’ve tossed endorsement deals left and right and locked in on milestone movements in the culture to show the brand’s alignment. It starts as far back as 1986 with Kurtis Blow and the “Now More Than Ever” campaign.
All one has to do is look at the KRS-One vs. MC Shan “Rhyme For Rhyme” campaign they ran in the ’90s to show the company isn’t new to this but “true to this.”
As previously reported, Sprite presented a campaign called “Icon’s Delight” in honor of Hip-Hop’s 50th anniversary earlier this year. As the title suggests, it included a spin on The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” Eric B. & Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique” and Latto’s “Big Energy.”
Now, the soda company has dropped a 3:44-minute clip of Latto’s tribute to Eric B. & Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique,” the title track from the duo’s 1992 album. In the promotion, Latto and Rakim sit together to talk about the legendary song. The “God MC” tells Latto he came up with the title of the track as a slick way of getting at his biters.
“So I was new in the game, doing my thing,” he says. “I started realizing everybody was kind of catching on to what I was doing. Some of them seemed to be biting. Like you’re gonna hear a bunch of you know Latto impersonator soon. So, you know I mean that was my little sarcastic remark like ‘don’t sweat my technique,’ don’t sweat what I do.’”
The legend says he would have never thought Latto “would be rhyming on” his hit song. She admits she was “nervous as hell” to be on the song but decided not to imitate anyone else but to talk from her own perspective. As she explains, “You can’t go wrong with you saying your story, you know.”
