Tha Alkaholiks aren’t really alcoholics. That’s what group member J-Ro shares in an episode of Myths Exposed.
“I’m sorry if that busts some of y’all fantasies about us,” he says.
He describes coming up with the name for the West Coast group with fellow rhymer King Tee, who first thought of Tha Alkaholiks. Originally, the group was J-Ro and Tash rapping over production from E-Swift under the name E.S.P., short for Educated Street Poets. But they had to change their name because the E.S.P. acronym was already taken.
“I said, ‘Yo, we should flip it and just say the music is Tha Alkaholiks and when you listen to us you get drunk off the music,'” J-Ro recalls.
But King Tee wasn’t buying it. He just gave J-Ro a grimace, “and that was the end of that shit.”
Despite shooting down the myth that Tha Alkaholiks, also known more simply as Tha Liks, drink every minute of every day, J-Ro says that they had unbeatable tolerance.
“But don’t get me wrong, we could drink anyone under the table,” he declares. “I only had one loss ever in my whole career. Royce Da 5’9, you know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t against you. You know who it was against, though. You was there, you were a witness.”
Even if they aren’t alcoholics, the members of Tha Akaholiks know their drinks. J-Ro boasts that he can say a toast in 14 different languages and goes on to detail the specialty drinks of a handful of countries.
“You can go to Germany and get drunk off a lot of German beer,” he says. “Croatia they have rakia. You go to Italy, you wanna drink the grappa.”
The United States, however, has plenty of choice in drinks in itself, especially with each state having its own culture.
“You can go to Seattle, Colorado, drink some nice microbrews with dirt in it or something,” J-Ro says, “something like that.”