There was a time when fine wristwatches were the preserve of tweedy old men. Today, the internet is now regularly ‘broken’ with mentions of nice watches worn by some of the most famous people in the world. Take the Shakira diss track ‘Out of your League’ in which she tells her ex, the football mega star Gerard Piqué, “I’m worth two 22-year-olds. You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo. You traded a Rolex for a Casio.”
Pique didn’t take the shot lying down and arrived at a press conference last week driving a Twingo with a Casio watch on his wrist and declared that the humble digital watch would, “last a lifetime”.
Astonishingly, this is not the first time that a Casio watch has been used as a metaphor for a woman in a pop song. George Ezra’s 2014 ‘Cassy O’ – in which he tries to woo back a girl called Cassy O but fears he is running out of time – is kinder to the perfectly nice and inexpensive digital watch brand. A catchy song, even if the wordplay in the title is somewhat clumsy.
Of course, it is in hip hop that haute horological lyricism tends to reach its zenith. While rappers have always bragged about wearing nice watches, Jay Z in the late '90s used knowledge and connoisseurship as means by which to set new watch trends and make watches part of the pop cultural zeitgeist. As far back as 1997’s ‘Imaginary Player’ he was admonishing lesser – that is to say less sophisticated, less clued up – hustlers for wearing Rolexes that had been flooded with aftermarket diamonds instead of official factory set diamonds from the brand’s manufacture. “Those ain’t Rolex diamonds,” he says, incredulously. “What the fuck you done to that?” Quite. He would also kick start the trend for the Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks with a mention on the 2002 track ‘Show You How’, which states quite simply that he owns one with an alligator strap. Clueless fans (me) back then had to first find out how to spell ‘Audemars Piguet’ before googling it.
More recently, Atlanta rap GOAT Future, along with friends Young Thug and Offset, asked listeners: “Ayy, what kinda water is that? It's Patek water (It's Philippe water)” – on the track ‘Patek Water’. Here ‘water’ is an abstraction of ice, which of course, is slang for diamonds. It is clear that unlike the purist Jay Z, Future has no problem with ‘buss down’ or aftermarket diamonds. The other iconic Patek moment in contemporary rap comes courtesy of Future’s song, ‘Life is Good’ in which Drake says, ‘Virgil got that Patek on my wrist goin' nuts’ which refers to the emerald festooned ‘slimed out’ Nautilus 5726 that he had his friend, the streetwear sensei, Virgil Abloh design specially for him. The piece will surely end up in MOMA’s permanent collection one day as a prime example of hip-hop’s obsession with baroque wrist candy. Until then, in 2023, we expect the name drops and mentions to get increasingly preposterous – and creative.
