“St. Ides’s ads emerged at the same moment that hip-hop promo videos went mainstream on music-television channels, and the two worked synergistically to cross-promote each another,” says Eithne Quinn. Quinn, whose 2005 book, Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap, comprehensively chronicles the campaign, credits the ads with authentically reflecting hip-hop’s aesthetic at a time when it was knocking on the door of the mainstream. “The ads and [rap music] videos often shared the same settings and styles,” she says. “The ads, often made by underground hip-hop producers with a purposeful low-production and verité styling, felt credible to many hip-hop fans. They had credibility for the core hip-hop audience, and from there, they seemed cool to the exploding suburban fan base for hip-hop.”

While DJ Pooh added instant street cred to St. Ides’s ambitions, it took an unintended controversy to catapult the brand onto the average hip-hop listener’s radar. That came courtesy of a 1991 radio ad, which used a vocal sample of Public Enemy’s Chuck D from the song “Bring the Noise” without his permission.

Having recorded the Public Enemy track “One Million Bottlebags” that year to protest malt liquor’s pervasiveness in the black community, Chuck D, unsurprisingly, wasn’t thrilled about his voice being used to hawk St. Ides, and promptly filed a $5 million lawsuit against McKenzie River that was eventually settled out of court. Later that year, McKenzie River was sued by (and ultimately settled with) the New York State Attorney General’s Office for ads allegedly targeting underage minority children. Also, it was fined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which proceeded to shut down the company’s operations for three days. (Activists and authorities perhaps gave malt liquor special scrutiny because its percentage of alcohol by volume is more than that of most beers.)

Although McKenzie River denied it was purposefully targeting minors with St. Ides, it agreed to produce ads warning against underage drinking and drunk driving, as well as public service announcements promoting safe sex. It also donated money to charitable causes that Ice Cube was involved in, such as 1992’s “Get the Fist,” a West-Coast rap record released in the wake of that year’s L.A. riots.

McKenzie River may have pushed the limits of propriety with its ads, but legally, nothing stopped the campaign from proceeding. Exavier Pope, a Chicago-based attorney who specializes in entertainment and intellectual-property issues, says that there isn't any legal precedent explicitly banning an ad campaign like this—one that is targeted at a particular community in a way that some in that community perceive to be harmful.

Many weren’t pleased that a product with an above-average percentage of alcohol by volume was being marketed heavily to minority communities with disparities in income, diet, and healthcare. “Do I think Ice Cube telling people to get tested for AIDS is a good thing? Yeah, it would help,” says TJ Crawford, the city manager at the African-American lifestyle publication Rolling Out and a longtime activist in Chicago’s hip-hop circles. “But that positive message wasn’t promoted the same in comparison to the economic message of ‘Buy Malt Liquor.’” (Other than noting that the McKenzie River employees involved with the campaign have long since left, a company spokeswoman declined to comment on the St. Ides campaign.)