The most popular watch in rap songs these days is rarely even pronounced correctly. Timepieces from Patek Philippe & Co. (that is: pah-tek fee-leep), a luxury Swiss brand founded in 1839, have become the hip-hop elite’s latest go-to accessories, reaching near-complete cultural saturation when Beyoncé recently rapped about owning one beside JAY-Z from inside the Louvre. She isn’t alone. As one Genius sleuth pointed out, nearly one in every eight rap songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017 referenced the watch (an idea elaborated on in a recent video. 2017 also saw tracks like Soulja Boy’s “Patek,” Valee’s “Patek Philippe,” and in 2018 we got a Tory Lanez-featuring remix of G4 Boyz’ “Patek Philippe,” along with references from Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Pump, and Tyga, and dozens of mentions across Migos’ Culture II.
Though the Patek boom is somewhat recent, the watch has been around rap for years, repped by JAY-Z, Pusha-T (on Linkin Park’s “I'll Be Gone” remix in 2013 and 2015’s “Untouchable”), and Paul Wall, who referenced the watch in 2006 on Lil Keke’s “Chunk Up the Deuce.”
The sudden fascination centers around three rappers: Future, Young Thug, and Gucci Mane. The most prominent catalyst was Future on DJ Esco’s “Too Much Sauce” with Lil Uzi Vert in June 2016: “Patek Philippe, the plain one/That’s too much sauce,” he raps. Gucci, newly out of prison and a mentor to both Future and Thug, was very quick to catch on. “I just ordered a Patek Philippe watch in all-white that arrived the day of the homecoming show—it’s a badass watch,” Gucci told Vogue in August 2016. And apparently he couldn't wait to flaunt it: There were flexes on three songs in the next few months (“Secure the Bag,” “Hi Five,” and “Both” with Drake).
The 2017 explosion that followed can largely be credited to Future and Migos, particularly Offset. A major mid-year jumping off point was DJ Khaled's June album Grateful with mentions on four songs. (Khaled was spotted wearing a $300,000, iced-out Nautilus in 2016.) By then, the Patek was popping up everywhere, in songs by Cardi B, Yo Gotti (“Rake It Up”), Chris Brown (“Pills & Automobiles”), and Lil Uzi Vert (“Early 20 Rager”), but the originators were still staking their claim to the watch. There are 15 mentions across 10 songs on Offset and 21 Savage’s collaborative mixtape Without Warning and eight mentions across 10 songs on the Future and Thug team-up Super Slimey, not including the song “Patek Water” (which features... Offset). Curiously, among the popular models mentioned by Offset is the super rare 5790, which doesn’t actually exist.
As in the wider world, a watch is seen by most rappers as a king-making talisman that dictates one's place in the pecking order. “A watch on a man symbolizes where he’s at in life, especially as far as class goes,” says Bobby Wesley Williams, longtime stylist to watch aficionado Future. Because of this, whether iced out or plain jane, watches make as many (if not more) cameos as chains in rap songs. And Patek Philippe has become the new standard-bearer. More popular models—Nautilus, Calatrava, and Aquanaut—can range from $20,000 to $200,000. An old-money symbol, the Patek on a rapper represents new wealth crossing the threshold and broaching high-class spaces.
“Once you have a Patek Philippe, You already in the game,” says G4 Boyz’ Buggy, who, along with his brother Ice Baby, got his first Patek in 2015. There’s a sense that owning a Patek represents entrance into a new class of rap sophisticate. “We’re buying the same watches as Future and Meek Mill and guys who are multi-platinum rappers,” adds Buggy. “Once we had it, it was a big thing for our fans and the hood.“
Rap has historically been a Rolex genre. There have been flirtations with other watch brands—Cartier, Movado, and Muller, especially—but those were mostly a curiosity of rap’s one-percenters building vast and varied collections. In 2014, watch aficionado website GMT Minus Five broke down how JAY-Z, Kanye West, and Rick Ross overwhelmingly favor Rolexes in verse (though Jay, a longtime watch connoisseur, has historically been an Audemars Piguet man, and had a brief but splashy relationship with Hublot during the Watch the Throne era). The Rolex is a favorite of drug lord Pablo Escobar and fictional mob boss Tony Soprano so, naturally, it’s perfect for the idealized rap character of the wealthy kingpin. As Meek Mill put it to close his “Dreams & Nightmares” intro in 2012: “It was somethin’ about that Rollie when it first touched my wrist/Had me feelin’ like that dope boy when he first touched that brick.”
The Rolex hasn’t disappeared from rap but it has taken a backseat to Patek Philippe over the last year and a half. (On G-Eazy’s 2017 Top 5 hit “No Limit,” Cardi B raps, “Fuck the Rollie! Patek face.”) “A Rolex is a big thing in the culture, but I started looking at different watches and I saw foreigners in different countries wouldn't really wear Rolexes—they’d wear Richard Mille and Patek Philippe,” says Buggy. Ice adds: “Rolex is nice, but I could be going to the club and next thing you see somebody else with the same watch. But the Patek Philippe—it’s rare. It's different.”
The biggest Rolex convert during this stretch has been Meek Mill, who has rapped about Rolexes so much in the past that it’s become something of a running joke. But since 2016, he has name-dropped Pateks on nine different songs, ushering in Peak Patek obsession.
This shift hasn’t happened without pushback. On “Hard Piano,” a Pusha-T song from an album he named for Rolex’s pricey Daytona model (which usually runs in the $20,000 ballpark), the Virginian raps, “Had to find other ways to invest/’Cause you rappers found every way to ruin Pateks.” This is an obvious response to oversaturation in rap songs, but it's hard to overstate how rare and timeless the pieces still are. Many cost as much as $1 million. In 2016, one sold for $11 million. As Wesley Williams puts it: “I don’t think it’s possible for rappers to ruin a watch of such luxury. It’s a collector’s item,” for rappers particularly the Nautilus 5711 and 5980 models.
One way rappers make these items even more distinctive is by taking them to private jewelers to be customized. “When you’re in the culture, we always put a twist on things, and busting down watches is one of them,” Buggy says. To bust down a watch is to ice-out the bezel with diamonds, and Patek Philippe watches look better customized than most high-end brands, which has played a major role in them becoming trendy for rap in the Instagram era. “When a Patek Philippe is [a] bust down, the diamonds are so small that when the lights hit it, it seems like it has a thousand karats on there,” says Ice Baby. “It’s blazing and a beautiful thing.”
Wesley Williams sees rapper interest in Pateks as somewhat cursory, caused by what he calls a “trickling effect.” “I’m not going to say rappers aren’t studying watches, but I think there’s more rappers merely following the trends as opposed to seeking out types of watches and the different styles and how it’s made. But I think rappers will start seeking into value. If they’ve evolved from just buying Rolexes to buying Pateks, they’ll eventually start researching watches.”
Of course, no rapper has to be beholden to one watch at a time. Many take pride in having collections from assorted watchmakers. “If I had to label [Future’s] in tiers, I’d put Pateks into tier three where a Richard Mille might be tier one, the highest tier,” says Williams. But while Future may favor Mille in his personal life, that isn’t the one he helped make popular among rappers; the power is in the endorsement, in the item being used as a reflection of rap luxury within the gaudy, oversized world of their songs. Through a sort of word-of-mouth exchange that has occurred via raps from hip-hop’s current powerbrokers, the Patek Philippe timepiece became a shining emblem of ultimate wealth. These sorts of shifts happen often in rap (remember Bape?), but rarely do they feel so tangible.
In the wake Pusha’s latest album, Bobby Wesley Williams foresees the next wave of rappers breaking rank to pursue Daytonas. “It’s all about having the watch first,” he says. “That’s what this industry is all about: being the trailblazer.”
For a while, the flow of culture used to run from high fashion into rap, but in recent years there seems to have been a reversal. “The urban community is what fashion is looking at now to help build their collections,” Wesley Williams says, citing Gucci and Louis Vuitton’s forays into streetwear. “It’s because of our culture—and the name dropping. It starts with hip-hop.” As Ice Baby puts it: “When hip-hop does it, the whole entire world wants to do it.”
