page_title: Hip hop fashion
section_title: Criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Hip hop fashion / Criticism
caption_attribution_description: Photographer&#160;: Vincent Gable English: The Cool Kids at the Eurockéennes 2008
context_page_description: Hip hop fashion, is a distinctive style of dress originating from African America, Latin America and from inner city youth located in New York City, followed by cities like Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit, Memphis, Washington D.C., Atlanta, St. Louis, Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and others. All have contributed various elements to the overall style seen worldwide today. Hip hop fashion complements the expressions and attitudes of hip hop culture and has changed significantly during its history. Today, it is a prominent fashion worn across the whole world and popular with all ethnicities.
context_section_description: Commentators from both inside and outside the hip hop community have criticized the cost of many of the accoutrements of hip hop fashion. Chuck D of Public Enemy summarized the mentality of hip hop fashion and some low-income youths as "Man, I work at McDonald's, but in order for me to feel good about myself I got to get a gold chain or I got to get a fly car in order to impress a sister or whatever." In his 1992 song "Us", Ice Cube rapped that "Us niggaz will always sing the blues / 'cause all we care about is hairstyles and tennis shoes". Some fans have expressed disappointment with the increased amount of advertising for expensive hip hop brands in hip hop magazines. In one letter to the editor in Source magazine, a reader wrote that the magazine should "try showing some less expensive brands so heads will know they don't have to hustle, steal, or rob and blast shots for flyness." In fact, there were many highly publicized robberies of hip hop artists by the late 1990s. Guru of Gang Starr was robbed of his Rolex watch at gunpoint, Queen Latifah's car was car-jacked, and Prodigy was robbed at gunpoint of $300,000 in jewelry.
  Hip hop has sometimes come under fire for glorifying brands that shut it out and for embracing a fashion culture which does not embrace hip hop or black culture. A dichotomy exists in the "collaboration" between influential hip hop artists who embrace designer brands and fashions, and these same brands that profit from hip hop's influencers. Designer brands such as Louis Vuitton or Versace align themselves with influential musicians because of the potential gains, but simultaneously maintain distance from these allies outside of advertising, "almost as with a keen desire to hold the controlling hand in these relationships" and control their public image. In these partnerships/collaborations between designers and artists there is sometimes a pattern of exploitation in which the designers benefit disproportionately more than hip hop artists.
  A few hip hop insiders, such as the members of Public Enemy, Immortal Technique, Paris and Common, have made the deliberate choice not to don expensive jewelry as a statement against materialism.
caption: A DJ wearing a zip-up hoodie and checkerboard frame sunglasses
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