practicing other african indigenous religions. certainly you did put your best on when you went to church on sunday morning. when you got to church, you saw fashion merging with the music because the gospel choir was always the thing to watch. oh, jesus this is a very important fact of how you see style within the religious environment of the church. if you talk about african-american culture, music especially, jazz, blues, hip-hop, any sort of genre of music, r&b, there s always a unique clothing style, unique approach to fashion that goes with that. in terms of how hip-hop and urban hip-hop and fashion and music have fused together to be
the animal kingdom in the human being world is parallel crazy. peacocks, the way they flair up to attract their mate, certain animals change up their whole appearance, it s all about their flair, what you look like or how does it radiate off of you. and certain african chiefs were really ostentatious or out there with their garb. like kings and how they were painted in great britain. look at the outfits they re wearing. they look like kings, royalty. so wardrobe has always been a thing, you know. if you go through the history of african-american culture, particularly in the 20th century, style, fashion, clothes were always a very prominent
rappers and to hear these battles between busy b and cool mo d. up to that point, you had to use your imagination, whoever got to tape, telling you how it was. remember in the park, you had mel e mel, and you had caris ma. back there jamming. to me, just party at the park. we didn t really know hip-hop was getting that big, you know. even back then it was all about fashion. even the outfits that mellie mel would wear, it was outrageous at that time, but it was like, oh, he s a superstar, he s a rapper. that s what they do. so he had a pass to wear all those crazy jackets and cowboy boots. back in the day, if you find any old cold crush flyers, you receded those cats used to dress up. they got suited for a lot of their events. i mean, armani suits, you know.
man, he made off with that? then you have all of these things that s a domino effect, knowing what our culture want and how much money is made. when mainstream american culture discovered hip-hop, they began trying to sort of, you know, sell bits and pieces of it in any way they could. and this is when you got all of these, you know, fashion labels associated with rappers. at rock wear, i would try to show a lifestyle that people would buy into. that s what i was ultimately trying to do. you know what i m saying? i don t want it to be looked at as we re good for urban or black clothing. i wanted to compete with everyone else in the world. rock awear was around well before sean jean but it wasn t until we saw the numbers of shawn giuliajohn that rock awar
traffic and all the activity that was happening online. before, what our influences were were confined to what was at our reach, and now with the expansion and the power of the internet, i have access to every fashion, look, brand across the world. so i can be whoever i want to be. we re in a space where they are exchanging so many ideas that i think that we re getting back into individual looks. it s no longer, you know, it s either urban or it s punk or this or that, you know. it s not preppy. all that stuff to me doesn t mean anything now. in hip-hop fashion right now people are taking way more