Caring Services, Inc.

Think of a drink filled with herbal ingredients that supposedly helps you relax, and you might envision something like a line of teas sold in a crunchy health-food shop, over there by the millet, just past the table with the Rolfing pamphlets.

The makers of Drank, a carbonated beverage in a purple can that contains valerian root, melatonin and rose hips, had a different image in mind for the product; something more youthful, attitude-laden and connected to the trend-making power of hip-hop.

The extreme relaxation drinks slogan, for instance, is Slow Your Roll, slang meaning, basically, calm down. This past December, Crank's creator, Innovative Beverage Group, reported sales just shy of $1.5 million through the end of September; Drank is currently available in more than 45 cities, mostly in the South.

Purple drank is itself a slang term along with lean, sizzurp or just purple stuff, among others for a mixture of cough syrup (particularly in a prescription-strength version that contains codeine) and soda, which is closely associated with the rap scene in Houston.

The effects of this home-brew concoction are narcotic, and it has been associated with several deaths.

None of which is a secret; a number of hit rap songs by Houstonians and other Southern artists have referenced the stuff or the various hip-hop stars who have died of overdoses, dating back to the 2000 death of the producer DJ Screw.

Lil Wayne's lyrics have made multiple references to sipping syrup.

This has attached some controversy to Drank, as well as to a rival drink called Purple Stuff, made by a different Houston company. One of the most asinine things I have ever seen; a public-health professor commented in one Houston Chronicle article that also included complaints from local religious figures and rappers.

Not surprising, right! I am a little shocked at the criticism, Peter Bianchi, the inventor of Drank, told me. We are not advocating drug use at all, he continued, but merely offering an innocuous beverage to anyone who feels a little stressed out; carbonated counter programming, as it were, to the firmly established energy drink category.

Originally from Upstate New York, Bianchi worked in finance and ended up in Houston working for private investment banks, researching the beverage market, among other things. About six years ago he started Innovative Beverage Group as a distributor, with the idea of eventually creating his own brands.

I am hyperactive; I am always on the go, he says, explaining that for years he had sipped his own melatonin-and-valerian blend to keep me relaxed and balanced without resorting to the more sedative option of alcohol.

Three years ago he decided an anti-energy drink seemed like a good first stab at the mass market. He predicts the relaxation segment has a bright future.

It is at this point that Bianchis borderline New Age tale takes an odd turn.

Instead of pursuing the traditional niche for herbal-remedy relaxation (the millet-and-Rolfing crowd), he wanted a broader demographic; and that?s why he chose more of an urban approach, more of a hip approach.

He mentions 50 Cents collaboration with Vitamin Water as a precedent for the hip-hop chic he thought would work. Crank's promotional efforts have included distributing samples from a Hummer and getting Drank into a recent Keri Hilson/Lil Wayne video. As a drummer himself, Bianchi adds, he was versed in hip-hop culture and had befriended various Houston musicians and producers, and he found the laid-back local rap style appealing.

An early Drank press release specifically cites the late DJ Screw as an inspiration. It is hard to imagine, then, how he could be shocked that anyone associates Drank with the illicit, and hardly health conscious, practice of sipping syrup.

Even so, Crank's image ultimately has very little to do with hip-hop, or even with the twisted glamour that so often attaches to the dangerous behavior of the infamous. It has everything to do with the long history of drumming up attention for beverages by imposing fresh novelty upon them.

Nobody really seems to be suggesting that there's anything wrong with the actual contents of Drank. And indeed even Bianchi concedes that there is nothing new about a supposedly mood-tweaking blend of herbal ingredients. Drank consumers and Drank critics, then, probably have something in common: Both are responding not to the stuff but to its image. And that image, of course, is mostly what's for sale.