Moderator: Lauron J. Kehrer, Western Michigan University
Katie Moulton, “Nelly's Band-Aid: Physical Vulnerability as Pop Fashion Statement”
In the early 2000s, at the height of his pop domination, rapper and hip-pop artist Nelly began sporting a Band-Aid on his left cheek. The small adhesive immediately sparked speculation, imitation, and derision. Was the unmissable Band-Aid an idiosyncratic fashion choice, a blemish cover, or a deeper political message? The answer is some combination of all three, but the facial decoration became his much-debated signature for a decade. Nelly ditched the bandage many years ago, but the image looms large in cultural nostalgia. In this talk, I will tell the conflicting stories behind and the legacy of Nelly’s Band-Aid. And I will explore why this provocative adornment – a pop icon demonstrating physical vulnerability as part of their style iconography -- is particularly rare and deeply tied to expressed masculinity, connecting it to other examples from Axl Rose’s leg casts to 50 Cent’s bulletproof vest, and even – woefully – Trump followers’ ear bandages.
As a millennial St. Louisan, I have grown up with Nelly-as-cultural-icon and written extensively about his impact. As I did with my 2023 presentation on The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” and how wedding playlists predict future pop canon, I hope to examine a piece of seemingly fluffy pop ephemera from a new, illuminating, and entertaining angle.
Paige Chung, “Grills and Bling: The Entanglements of Johnny Dang and Black, Excess Aesthetics in Hip-Hop Culture”
In Erykah Badu’s 1999 song “Southern Girl”, she sings “home of the teeth that’s gold,” proclaiming the American South’s reign on grills, gold, and lineage of grill beauty rooted in a Black aesthetic of excess. Teeth have a long sociocultural history as an expression of beauty and class status. Hip-hop culture elevates teeth beauty with grills, such blinged-out embellishments are boasted in raps communicating upward mobility. Johnny Dang is a famous Vietnamese jeweler based in Houston, Texas. Since the mid-1990’s he’s been recognized as the top celebrity jeweler amongst icons Migos, Soulja Boy, Simone Biles, etc. How does Johnny Dang, a Vietnamese refugee, become a symbol of hip-hop grills culture, a culture rooted in Black diasporic aesthetics?
Aesthetics of excess, in Jillian Hernandez parlance, is a physical representation of abundance by Black and Latina women that boast their beauty and establish their humanity despite oppressive conditions. Shine and bling aesthetics, as theorized by Krista Thompson, function as forms of resistance through agency and empowerment for African Diasporic communities. In this paper, I trace the collaboration between rappers and famous Vietnamese jeweler Johnny Dang through Dang’s guest appearances across music videos from Nelly’s “Grillz” to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Bigger in Texas” to think critically about the material products (grills) and aesthetic codes (Blaccent) that Dang sells and embodies. Hip-hop’s entanglement with Blackness as a fixed, ontological category is troubled through the intimate relationship between Johnny Dang and hip-hop celebrities, I argue, showing hip-hop’s changes through time and dissemination of cultural exchange and conversely, Vietnamese migration post-1975 end of the Vietnam war. By traversing through these relationships and music video moments, I unravel the entanglements of hip-hop with Johnny Dang that reveals the tensions, contradictions, and displacements of Black aesthetic practices that arise when adapted by other diasporic communities.
Shiva Ramkumar, “Aesthetics of Authority: Styling Contradiction in Tamil Hip Hop”
Artists in the world of Global Hip Hop face a difficult challenge: to stylistically authorize themselves as Hip Hop artists while also performing authenticity in their own cultural contexts and audiences. Tamil Hip Hop in particular deals with the distinct, complex worlds of American Hip Hop (and the specificities of Black culture encoded within it) and Tamil media and culture. Both these worlds are full of multiple, competing aesthetic ideologies along lines of gender, race and/or caste, class, and more. I focus specifically on Tamil aesthetic ideologies as they draw from Tamil film, and how male protagonists in particular have long been a key stylistic influence on Tamil youth. I trace Hip Hop’s aesthetic ideologies to music videos and red carpets, which boast a diverse variety of styles across different time periods and genres, from streetwear to gender-fluid high fashion; styles that have not only been taken up within Hip Hop communities, but that have gone global in popular culture more broadly.
I interrogate the ways in which the aesthetic ideologies of Tamil films and Hip Hop interact in the music of Tamil Hip Hop artists, and how they might emerge as both complementary and conflicting in different contexts. I center this investigation on the music of Tamil rappers Yung Raja and Paal Dabba in particular, analyzing their music videos to (1) identify the specific aesthetic ideologies they draw from, and (2) discuss the ways in which they are privileged, transformed, or contradicted. An examination of how these aesthetic ideologies are negotiated can offer new insights into how authority and status can be constructed in the diverse world of Global Hip Hop.
Alexander Moore, “‘Wear Your Halo Like a Hat, That’s Like the Latest Fashion’: Hip-Hop Identity, Merchandising, Fandom, and Chance the Rapper’s ‘3’ Hat”
In 2016, posters for Chance the Rapper’s upcoming mixtape Coloring Book were wheatpasted around major metropolitan cities across the United States. The cover features Chance (real name Chancelor Bennett) with a smile on his forward-tilted face, wearing a New Era ® snapback embroidered with the number “3,” which Chance has stated represents his third mixtape, the Holy Trinity, and his 3-part family (himself, his partner, and daughter). Other than the “3,” the mixtape cover art does not include an artist name or album title, as it is presumed that Chance the Rapper had enough of a strong following to market without any titles.
Chance garnered a massive fandom from his independently released mixtapes 10 Day (2012) and Acid Rap (2013). Coloring Book was no stranger to the same process of his previous mixtapes. He recorded the album without a major label and released the mixtape online for free. The record eventually went on to become a critical success, winning Chance a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2014. After the breakthrough success of Coloring Book, he began selling the “3” hat online and, in 2018, 2 years after the album was released, claims that he made $6 million on selling the hats.
From “peacocking” to “hypebeasts,” there are various motives to express fashion within the culture of hip-hop. While acknowledging the commercialism and exploitation of fans that merchandise may have, this paper investigates how Chance the Rapper’s hat has given him an iconic look, allowing fans to engage with the merchandise and feel a personal connection to the artist, who has consistently gone on record about his philanthropic work of donating his income to arts education in Chicago.
