An ageing rapper is not a good look. The ones who continue to make music as they age almost always end up seeming out of touch and, well, old. As Andre 3000 put it in a recent interview with GQ, " hip-hop is about freshness. You can always hop, but you won’t always be hip." That's why it's often refreshing (if also hilarious) to see rappers trading on their names to promote some other business venture, usually something more on the boring side. There's 50 Cent's Vitamin Water, Fava Flav's chicken joint (which stayed open for all of four months) and even Kanye's Yeezy clothing line.
Today marks the opening of another ex-rapper's new vanilla business venture. Mark Whalberg, who was once upon a time a rapper named Marky Mark (backed by the Funky Bunch), has bought a Chevrolet dealership in Columbus, Ohio. Seemingly a strange choice, but Whalberg must know what he's doing, especially considering the trajectory of his career; he's switched around into whatever field would take him: rapper, model, actor, and now, businessman.
It should also be noted that this is not the first time Wahlberg has started a business. He is an expert. There's his punny burger chain, Whalburgers, and a water company that he started with Diddy called Aqua Hydrate (another obvious name). The website for the water brand proclaim's "get more from your water" as a video that's half Wahlberg working out and half race cars plays in the background.
Whalberg says of the new business: "I love cars and the chance to work with an experienced, proven dealer-operator like Jay and represent an iconic brand like Chevrolet inspired me to get involved."
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