Still Fresh to Death

Fifty years after the creation of hip-hop, its style remains as vital and influential as ever

- MITCHELL S. JACKSON

AT THE TIME I DISCOVERED HIP-HOP, I was waist-high to an adult and an aspiring simulacrum of Michael Jackson's style. (Picture a Jheri curl, pleather Thriller jacket, and penny loafers.) Then my aunt Maria, who was five years older, dropped an LP on the basement record player. "I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie/To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock." Although I can't be sure the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" was the first rap song I ever heard, it was the genre's first mainstream hit, introducing hip-hop to the masses six years after DJ Kool Herc unveiled his breakbeats at a party in the Bronx all the way back in 1973.

That means this year-2023-it turns the big 5-0! And while rap might be the most popular aspect of what people now call "the Culture," fashion has always-ever been an integral aspect of it.

On that same seminal song, one of the group's members-Big Bank Hankbragged that he had "more clothes than Muhammad Ali" and dressed "so viciously." Did he indeed own more clothes than the Greatest? I wouldn't bet no bread on it. But that's hip-hop fashion for you.