Songfacts®:

• This is a remix of the original "Pass The Courvoisier," which appears on Busta's 2001 album Genesis. In 2002, he reworked the song into a monster jam featuring P. Diddy, who raps with him on the track, and Pharrell Williams, who sings the "looks like them asses is swollen" hook. Williams produced the song with his Neptunes partner Chad Hugo. This new version was released as a single and featured on the soundtracks to the movies Love Don't Cost a Thing (2003) and Taxi (2004).
• Here's a breakdown of the samples used in "Pass The Courvoisier Part II":
  
  "Scenario" by A Tribe Called Quest. Busta performed on this 1992 song, which used various samples of its own, including "Give It Up" by Kool & the Gang and "Little Miss Lover" by Jimi Hendrix.
  
  "Shake Ya Ass" by Mystikal. This one was also written and produced by The Neptunes and features Pharrell on vocals.
  
  "Easy Come, Easy Go" by Odyssey. This 1977 song was by a New York disco group who had their biggest hit with "Native New Yorker" that same year. The song was written by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, who wrote some hits for The Four Seasons. Providing some insight on how all these samples were cleared, Randell told us: "We worked it out with Warner Brothers at that time - they were licensed to use what they wanted to made their record."
  
  "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang. The part used sampled the famous bassline created by Bernard Edwards in "Good Times" by Chic, which he wrote with Nile Rodgers.
  
  A total of 16 writers are credited on this track: Busta, Diddy, The Neptunes, and the composers of all the sampled material.
• Courvoisier is an expensive French cognac. Typically considered an after dinner drink, it has grown in popularity and is often consumed at parties and mixed with other beverages. Some companies, like Motorola, paid to have their products mentioned in rap songs, but Courvoisier did not pay for this. Sales of Courvoisier surged after the song came out, increasing 20% over the previous year. In the advertising world, Puffy and Busta are known as "key influencers," meaning that if they use a product, others are likely to follow. Barbara Jackson, who was vice-president of marketing at the company that makes the beverage, said: "As a marketer, you're thrilled. You can't buy this. Well, you could, but it's more credible when you don't have to."
  
  While there was no official deal with Courvoisier, the company did sponsor some lavish parties after some of Busta's concerts to show their support.
• A few years before this came out, Courvoisier tried to expand their market by advertising to the urban community. They took out ads in black magazines and sponsored R&B concerts in an effort to shed their image as a beverage consumed by stuffy old white guys after dinner at the country club. The campaign worked very well.
  
  Marketing to the hip-hop community became a very big deal for luxury beverage companies. In 2010, Hennessy launched Hennessy Black by commissioning a Swizz Beatz theme song for the drink called "When I Step Into the Club." Thanks to the rap community, cognac (or "the yak") sales bumped up about 37% from 2001-2007 before dropping in 2008 because of the recession. Companies who did not embrace this audience faced a backlash: When a Cristal executive answered a question about rappers mentioning the brand by saying, "What can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it," Jay-Z declared the company racist and pulled Cristal from his 40/40 sports bars.
• Hennessy, a rival cognac brand, has also been mentioned in many rap songs, but they have never been included in the title of a hit song.
• Mr. T has a prominent role in the video, including a scene where the rappers admire his gold chains. There's also a break in the action about 1:20 into the clip where Busta and Mo'Nique recreate a scene from the 1989 movie Harlem Nights where Eddie Murphy gets in a fight with Della Reese and shoots her in the pinky toe. Later on, Jamie Foxx shows up for a reworking of a scene from the movie Rush Hour 2.
• Busta Rhymes claims that he prefers Hennessy to Courvoisier, but Courvoisier fit the song better.
• Courvoisier was featured in a popular Saturday Night Live skit called "The Ladies Man," which was later made into a movie. Tim Meadows' character sips it as he talks about how to score with the chicks.