Cato Alexander

• According to popular media and industry folklore alike, African American cognac consumption dates to either or both world wars.
• In this telling, Black GIs sent to Southwest France fell in love with the bottled spirit as much as the spirit of a country they perceived as decidedly less racist than home.
• This year Le Monde published a story about cognac’s popularity among America’s rap artists, recapitulating the same wartime genesis.

A century-old affair

• There is no evidence to suggest that it’s anything more than romantic myth, and the story certainly invites questions.
• Why would Black soldiers become enamoured of cognac specifically, but not wine, which is consumed much more by the French?
• Why would Black soldiers alone fall for cognac’s charms, but not their White counterparts?
• Formerly enslaved Manhattan tavern owner Cato Alexander is just one example who brings to life African American knowledge of cognac.

Hip hop and cognac

• Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson as the first nationally-circulated magazine designed to showcase Black success, its pages helped position cognac as the perfect emblem of comfortable Black affluence.
• Jay-Z’s 2012 venture as a cognac brand owner with d'Ussé represents the long outgrowth of cognac’s bursting onto the hip hop scene in the 1990s and early 2000s.
• Nas claims to be the first to include cognac in his rhymes – for example, “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park)” on 1994’s Illmatic.
• It’s a story that casts cognac as part of the family, a marker of freedom, and a vehicle to repudiate American racism.