Chingy has said that despite the chart-topping success of his song “Holidae In,” he never got to stay at the hotel chain for free.
In an exclusive interview with HipHopDX, Chingy said the Holiday Inn hotel chain never offered the St. Louis rapper or his team a free room, despite the song likely making the hotel “a lot of money.”
“No!” Chingy told DX after being asked if he ever got a free Holiday Inn stay. “We tried to work with them when I came out with that song. I’m pretty sure I made them millions, I’m pretty sure I made them a lot of money. They wouldn’t work with us. They wouldn’t work with us.”
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He continued: “That song is true. We used to kick it at the Holiday Inn. We used to throw parties there. Play dominos, play spades, and drinking, and smoking and shit. We really used to do that. So we wrote a song about it, but they done messed with us.”
He went on to say that in 2011 he met a young woman who used to handle marketing for the hotel, and for a moment she expressed interest in the idea of a collaboration, but that was as far as it went.
In 2020, Entertainment Weekly echoed the same sentiment regarding Chingy’s brand association helping the chain, writing that the song undoubtedly brought a “coolness factor” to the Holiday Inn hotel.
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“Holidae In” featured appearances from Snoop Dogg and Ludacris – who had signed Chingy to his label Disturbing Tha Peace – and served as the second single on Chingy’s debut album Jackpot. The track debuted at No. 73 on the Billboard 200 but shot up to the Top 10 across nine Billboard charts, where it lived for 21 weeks, peaking at No. 3. The single has since been certified gold.
In the years since Jackpot‘s seminal success, Chingy has used his rap status to provide opportunities for young people. In 2019, Chingy joined forces with the UP Companies to bring attention to a need for work within the construction industry. A lack of interest from Millennials and Gen Zers contributed to a high demand in the industry. At the time, a staggering 80 percent of U.S. construction firms had trouble hiring employees.
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“I come from poverty. I grew up with the hood mentality — that the only way out was with drugs, and guns, and being a gangster,” Chingy told DXat the time. “People think that this is the only way to accumulate this wealth, but it isn’t. There are a myriad of other ways, and one of those ‘other ways’ is through the construction industry.
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He continued: “My goal is to get a lot of young people to get into the construction industry and to use their hands more — it’s a great way to form a young mentality, to get away from the streets, and to accumulate wealth and put a roof over their heads.”
In 2020, Chingy even contributed to his own version of Lil Nas X‘s hit “Old Town Road” to try to inspire young people to go into construction.
“We re-did ‘Old Town Road’ and called it ‘Old Construction Road’ because we were trying to get more young people to get into the construction industry and to give them jobs,” he told DX a year later. “We wanted to let them know, they don’t have to deal with poverty for real if they want to work.”
