![]() ![]() He started teaching his clientele about quality, about diamond grades, about GIA certification. Biz Markie and Jay-Z and were the ones that started going to Jacob, because he started really speaking a different language than Tito’s. Another jeweler in the Diamond District that folks started to gravitate toward was Jacob the Jeweler. Biggie has raps about Tito.Īs hip-hop started to get more money, the industry started turn into a real industry. You hear his name in a lot of early lyrics. He became known for making bigger pieces and a lot of people in hip-hop started coming to him. What people call the first hip-hop jeweler is a guy named Tito Caicedo, who was based in the Diamond District and a lot of the street economy went to him. ![]() In Queens, you had Benny the Jeweler, and you had a guy named Eddie Plein, who had a place called Eddie’s Gold Teeth, who made grills. Then there was Albee Square mall out of Brooklyn and the Colosseum mall in Queens. ![]() First of all, there was Canal Street, back when diamonds weren’t a big part of hip-hop jewelry, when it was mostly gold. In New York, there were a couple of hot spots for jewelry. Were a lot of the original hip-hop jewelers based in the Diamond District? Even though hip-hop is now mainstream, it started as an underground culture. You combine all that and it really became this subculture within a subculture. You had jewelers that came up the same time as hip-hop came up that really catered to that world and were willing to make those kinds of pieces and could really speak the language. So all these things came together to form this really beautiful industry. 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. Vikki Tobak (pictured) is a journalist specializing in hip-hop. ![]()
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