12/11/2023 0 Comments Nyc hip hop jewelry![]() You wanted to be known for it, and, just like with the music, you remixed elements of culture and made it your own, made it a new thing. The other part of the reason is hip-hop culture has a great tradition of remixing and customization. And what other what better way to express that than through jewelry? Any time there’s money or greatness involved from time immemorial-you look at kings and queens and so on-there’s been the tradition of ornamenting yourself as a declaration of making it. The street is the runway, and the declaration that you’ve “made it” is expressed in what you put on your body. It has a tradition of showing up and showing out. Hip-hop culture is very much rooted in Black culture. Why did it become a big part of hip-hop culture? From there, I started going down the rabbit hole. But the jewelry really started to stick out, because it is such a form of communication in hip-hop and something that people have for a long time used to declare their identity and declared allegiance to different crews and things. So when I was doing my last book and started looking at the details, I was noticing the sneakers and the Dapper Dan jackets and all those details. ![]() Back in the day, when I used to work at a hip-hop record label and was around hip-hop and the club culture of early-’90s New York, everyone knew that jewelry was a big part of the culture. When you’re looking at hip-hop, you understand that what people wear and put on their bodies is equal part of the culture as is the music. Doing that book, I really zeroed in on a lot of details on what was in the photos. My last book was called Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop, which was a celebration of visuals and the photographers of hip-hop. I’ve been writing about hip-hop for a long time. How did you get interested in this topic? Here, she talks about why the hip-hop community embraced jewelry, what influence it’s had, and whether the interest will endure. Packed with photos, the 388-page coffee-table book has a foreword by Slick Rick and essays by A$AP Ferg, LL Cool J, as well as Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas, the cofounders of Quality Control Music. Her second book on the subject, Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History, will be released in October by Taschen Books. “It’s part of my ritual when I record an album: I wear the Jesus piece and let my hair grow till I’m done,” Jay wrote in his 2010 memoir, Decoded.Vikki Tobak (pictured) is a journalist specializing in hip-hop. Jay-Z famously wears one of them as a tribute to his late friend. There isn’t a person alive whose impact on modern-day jewelry trends is as great as that of Jacob the Jeweler, seen here in the 1990s at his Diamond District shop in Manhattan.īiggie’s Jesus pieces are iconic. Here, the late trendsetter wears grillz and stacked rings. Virgil Abloh, who launched Pyrex and Off-White before becoming Louis Vuitton’s first Black artistic director, broke boundaries in fashion by combining luxury motifs with Black codes. Pac reportedly gave Biggie his first one as a gift in the early Nineties. The Day-Date President, originally released in 1956, and customized here with a diamond-covered face for Tupac Shakur, may not be one of the most expensive Rolexes ever offered, at an estimated $45,000 - but it’s one of the rarest. ![]() Her style became a source of inspiration, complete with her signature door-knocker earrings. Roxanne Shante changed the game when she arrived in the 1980s - a teenage girl dissing the industry and looking fly while doing it. “Back then, there was no iPhone to check different time zones quickly, and world-time watches didn’t really exist,” Jacob says. ![]() Jacob the Jeweler’s Five Time Zone watch, seen on A$AP Ferg, was a revolution to the industry when he introduced it in 2002. But soon they were eager to capitalize on hip-hop’s success with collabs like this custom Rolex x Wu-Tang Clan piece, flaunted by RZA. “A lot of brands didn’t want to do things these stars were asking for,” Jacob says. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |