People celebrate their love of hip-hop culture in myriad ways.
Some get into the art of free-styling – rhyming off-the-cuff words over musical beats. Others collect the original vinyl that birthed their favorite hip-hop samples. Then there are those who heartily embrace the style by buying very expensive jewelry.
Attention-grabbing pieces have been a part of the culture since the late 1970s, when gold was considered “the joint.”
In the race to have the most eye-catching jewelry, the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah had a wrist cuff made with a 6-pound solid gold eagle perched on top. Rapper Slick Rick sported diamond-studded gold caps on his teeth, and the hippest ladies showcased huge gold door-knocker earrings in their ears before Jay-Z lyrically told everyone to chuck their gold and embrace platinum.
Those stories and more are included in the visual celebration of jewelry that is the book “Bling Bling: Hip Hop’s Crown Jewels.”
But the coffee-table tome, recently released, arrives at a tenuous time for the slang popularized by the 1999 hit song “Bling Bling” by B.G., a former MC at Cash Money Records.
In its December issue, Vibe magazine cattily asked in its “20 Questions” column, “Aren’t you gonna pull your hair out if you hear another mainstream media personality use the term ‘bling’?”
Another recently released book called “The Life and Death of ‘Bling Bling” offers an illustrated depiction of how the phrase “bling bling” went from hip to skip.
Even hip-hop artists put out a different message about conspicuous consumption these days. Young Jeezy – whose debut CD, “Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101,” is firmly planted in the Billboard Top 10 – is among the latest crop of hip-hop stars preaching business acumen as fervently as they wear “ice,” slang for diamonds.
And “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” Kanye West’s first single off his sophomore CD, “Late Registration,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, brought renewed attention to the “conflict diamonds” sold by guerillas from African countries in political turmoil to raise funds for warfare.
The death knell may have rung for the word “bling,” but Minya Oh, author of “Bling Bling,” isn’t worried about the future of ice.
“In hip-hop,” says Oh, “that’s our natural reaction to any trend. As soon as it gains steam, the only way we can kind of keep the exclusivity … is by saying, ‘Oh, that’s over,’ as soon as it starts. What shows that it’s not over is how mainstream it has become. It’s a topic people are talking about all the time.”
In fact, flossing – the act of showing off sparkling diamond jewelry – seems to be hotter than ever, with a growing group of hip-hop entrepreneurs entering the jewelry business. Forget all those stories about New York’s Jacob the Jeweler, who caters to an array of celebrities. Now Damon Dash, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent have their own iced-out watch lines.
And it isn’t only the hip-hop crowd moving in this direction. In his fall collection, Marc Jacobs, the go-to designer for discerning hipsters, showed a thick chain-link necklace of crocheted gold Lurex that visually harkens back to the rope chains of hip-hop’s heyday. Companies such as Franck Muller and Cartier manufacture a growing number of watches with huge iced-out faces.
“Hip-hop has changed the way people feel about conspicuous and very ostentatious consumption,” says Oh. In the past, she says, it was “not necessarily appropriate behavior in mainstream culture. You’re not supposed to be that showy, that flashy.”
But lately, says Oh, consumers are picking up the hip-hop ethos of “‘I’m going to shine as much as I can, while I can.’ So the jewelry is much more aggressive. Women wear more chunky, more masculine jewelry. Watches are so big you can see them down the block.”
That’s the look Anthony Jones, a 30-year-old owner of a dry-cleaning store in Dorchester, Mass., displays as he walks into Salameh Jewelry in Mattapan Square. Various body parts showcase some of the pieces he’s acquired in the 10 years he’s shopped at the store.
A white-gold ring studded with diamonds decorates one finger. On his neck is a lengthy white-gold chain anchored by the image of a devil the size of a small cellphone with ruby eyes and outspread wings sprinkled with diamonds.
A chunky white-gold and diamond bracelet bedazzles one wrist, while the other bears a gold watch with a custom-made band featuring the requisite diamonds, as well as images of tigers (a play on Jones’ nickname, “Tiger”) and the Versace logo (he owns about six pairs of the designer’s glasses).
Jones buys his jewelry, at thousands of dollars apiece, with a mission.
“I don’t want to get anything anybody else has,” he says.
That may leave the impression that his jewelry is all about appearances.
But Jones’ ice also imparts a deeper message that’s entirely political.
It relates to issues of power and how the jewelry people wear has the ability to denote that power.
As Public Enemy’s Chuck D explains in Oh’s “Bling Bling,” “A lot of things we black people do is to be seen, and to compensate for what we’re not given respect for, and that’s our skin.”
LL Cool J underscores that message in the credits of his 1989 release, “Walking With a Panther.” At a time when black people sporting jewelry were stereotyped as criminals, the rapper wrote, “I want to prove to the world I can reach all materialistic goals and be young, black and legal.”
The album cover shows the MC wearing a gold ring that spans the width of his knuckles. In a nod to excess, both the rapper and the panther he shares the cover with sport thick gold chains around their necks.
Although Jones has purchased hip-hop style jewelry at Salameh for a while, it was only about a year ago that Sam Salameh, the co-owner of the 11-year-old store, decided to wholeheartedly court this market. He was attending a jewelry show in New York when one of his suppliers advised him to get into the lucrative big-diamond jewelry business.
Among the more decorous pieces on display at his store are a flashy gold medallion of a devil’s head the size of a golf ball and a thick rose-gold bracelet with diamonds that twirl like spinning car rims.
Previously, most of Salameh’s customers came from the Caribbean community in the neighborhood. Now his clientele includes a younger generation culled from the city’s rap and sports worlds: Terror; the Lost Boyz; Ryan Gomes of the Celtics, who recently purchased a watch and a pair of earrings at the store; and Hot 97’s popular on-air personality Chubby Chubb.
Chubb got caught up in the jewelry game years ago as a young DJ working with Jay-Z in New York. The 32-year-old remembers wearing 10- and 14-karat gold chains. After that brief fling, this levelheaded DJ didn’t feel a need to floss.
Sure, he loves big-faced diamond watches – he owns four of them.
But he didn’t own any other high-priced pieces until he began collecting them three months ago as the unofficial spokesman for Salameh Jewelry, a role that consists of Chubb wearing Salameh’s merchandise and telling anyone who asks where he got it. Salameh also advertises on Hot 97.
On a recent Wednesday, Chubb arrives at the jewelry store wearing a huge rose-gold watch splashed with ice and a matching rose-gold ring.
Dime-size square rose-gold earrings with diamond faces are lodged in each earlobe, which he had pierced just so he could wear the earrings. Around his neck hangs a 3-D Jesus piece studded with white and yellow diamonds.
“This is a whole different look,” Chubb says of his Jesus medallion, joking. “This guy is almost walking on his own.”
