American rapper 2 Chainz tried out plenty of outrageous stuff as part of his hosting job in VICE TV’s online show, “The Most Expensivest.” Some of the episodes showed him eating the costliest popcorn in the market and drinking a $600-worth of cat poop-made coffee.
But in another video, the rapper met with Vitality Air founder and CEO Moses Lam. His Alberta-based company literally sells bottled air for $32. Like most people, the multi-awarded rapper was skeptical about the product. At one point in the video, 2 Chainz reminded Lam that he is the type of person who is hard to convince if a person tells him that the sky is falling since he would look up to see for himself if there is any truth to the claim.
The rapper also asked Lam that the air is free everywhere, so how did the company realize that they can sell a $32 bottled air to the public?
For his part, Lam explained that Vitality Air gathered the oxygen from various locations with exceptionally high air quality. It also targets selling the product in areas badly hit by smog and air pollution, like China and India, where the air’s toxicity levels reached an alarming point. It even caused approximately three million deaths to this day.
After trying out the product, 2 Chainz was definitely not impressed. He also had to hold back a laugh and appeared unconvinced when Lam explained that they extracted a percentage of the oxygen in the product to make it more potent.
But Lam took the experience to another level when he showed the “No Lie” rapper a diamond-encrusted bottle of air worth $10,000. One of the diamond studs is in the mask, they also placed another one on the button, and the third one is in the cap.
Lam even asked the rapper to sign the product. Currently, the limited edition 2 Chainz-signed 8-liter Banff Air bottle with 0.3-carat diamonds sells for $20,000.
In other interviews, Lam explained that the idea to sell canned air started as joke gifts. But he did not expect that there will be a huge demand for the product. According to Lam, people from China, India, and even South Korea became their target markets.
In 2017, the company was able to sell 10,000 bottles per month in China. They were hoping to increase that number to 40,000 per month. They also hoped to sell as many as 10,000 bottles in the Indian market.
But Vitality Air is not the only company that sells air in cans or bottles. The UK-based company Aethaer also collects fresh air from the British countryside and sells it for £80 (US$103) per jar. Like Lam, Aethaer’s head Leo De Watts claimed they want to break into the Chinese market since the people in the country needs cleaner air. Swedish company Airinum also plans to get a slice of the pie by selling air in India.
However, little is known about the health effects of bottled air on a person. Like 2 Chainz, the public must also be skeptical about it before buying a can or two.
