It may seem rather ludicrous that a brand-new apple varietal was named after the Grammy-winning artist behind “What’s Your Fantasy,” but millennials are a unique cohort.
“I came from a family of farmers,” JP Pacello, owner of upstate New York’s Pacello Orchard, tells TODAY.com, adding that his grandfather first farmed corn, beans and wheat on the land that 37-year-old Pacello now grows apples on.
“I started planting trees and fell in love with it, started expanding the orchard and now we are up to about 200 acres of planted orchard with several fresh varieties,” Pacello says. “We don’t do any processing or juicing; it’s all fresh: Galas, Honeycrisp, Evercrisp and Ludacrisp.”
The last apple variety he mentioned is relatively new to consumers, having been offered to orchards in 2021 and Sprouts Farmers Markets starting last year. And, of course, its name stands out on the apple stand.
While Ludacris, the artist, is known for platinum records and blockbusters like the “Fast & Furious” franchise, his apple counterpart is also garnering quite the name for itself. All over social media, folks who have seen the apple in passing have made the connection between pome and performer.
“Move over, Honeycrisp… there’s a new apple in town,” said Kat Kurdz in an October TikTok with millions of views, soundtracked by “Number One Spot.” Tickled users flooded the comments with Ludacris lyrics like, “Will they be available in different Area Codes?”, “They said ‘ROLLOUT’” and “Move, crisp, get out the way.”
Pacello came up with the name of the apple variety as part of his membership with the Midwest Apple Improvement Association (MAIA), a 1,200-member-strong organization founded and run by growers to produce apple varieties available to orchards in the U.S. and Canada.
“We grew up in the era of DMX, Ja Rule, Lil Wayne, Lil Jon, those are the popular rappers, especially Ludacris, and so I was just trying to think of a name that would attract my age group,” he explains.
According to MAIA, which has produced other apple varieties like the Red Zeppelin and the Evercrisp, the Ludacrisp apple originates from an open-pollination of the Sweet 16 apple variety. The Ludacrisp harvests in mid- to late-October and has a flavor akin to Juicy Fruit gum — which was almost its name — according to MAIA president and CEO Bill Dodd.
“Apple breeding is not an incredibly difficult process, but it’s an incredibly time consuming process,” says Dodd. “We have about nine apples that we have released. So Ludacrisp is one of them and it started about 25 to 27 years ago.”
MAIA actively breeds new varieties of apples with the intent of patenting them, naming them and releasing them to the public.
“If you take an apple seed from any apple and plant it, it will be like a child,” Dodd says, adding that any apple seed is a mix of two parent trees: the tree the apple grew on and tree one that provided the pollen.
“So when you plant a seed, it’s going to be something new, and so that’s what we do,” he says. “You plant those seeds, the trees grow, they start to produce apples. 98% of them are terrible and you throw them away, but some of them are exceptional and have the good characteristics that you’re looking for.”
Dodd says these varieties are then grafted onto when new apples are then grafted and onto other trees, then ready to be offered to growers. One of the final pieces is the name; MAIA’s membership is pooled for suggestions. And the name “Ludacrisp” proved to be very polarizing.
In a meeting with about 20 people, “the room was completely split,” Dodd says. “There was no one who was indifferent about it. They either thought it was the greatest thing ever or they hated it.”
“I’m like, ‘Boom, that’s what we want,’” he says — an apple that’s a talker. After deciding on the name, MAIA went through the trademarking process, and “bada bing, bada boom,” he says.
With his namesake fruit, Ludacris joins an elite group of humans with apples named after them. The McIntosh apple is named for farmer John McIntosh, who discovered the variety in Ontario, Canada back in 1811; the Granny Smith apple was named after Maria Ann Smith in 1868; and the Pink Lady apple was named for Australian Maud “Lady” Williams in the ‘80s. There’s also Early Joe, Jonathan, King David and Kaiser Wilhelm, among others, but not too many folks from this century hold the distinction.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how Ludacris himself feels about it: Representatives for the rapper did not immediately respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment.
Given the rapper’s penchant for surrealism, though — comic-book arms in his iconic “Get Back” video and giant objects all over the “Stand Up” video — people photoshopping his face onto apples fits right in.
Our farmers remain hopeful this apple will have as much longevity as its eponym — perhaps even more.
“I give you my ultimate goal in life here,” Dodd says. “The people that were in the Ludacris kind of time frame are aging, and so I’m waiting for my grandkids, or somebody’s grandkids, to come up to me and say, ‘Did you know there’s a rapper named after an apple?’”
