Luxury fashion has become synonymous with hip-hop, though not too long ago, many of its institutions would have turned their noses up at the rap stars who dominate pop culture today (and racism is still resonant in the industry despite modern strides). In her book, Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion, longtime music journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy chronicles the unique and often unlikely kinships — forged through family, friendships, and sometimes simply fame — that have been the basis of legendary collaborations between labels and tastemakers in Black music. In this exclusive excerpt, Krishnamurthy looks at how women in rap and design changed the game in the 1990s and early aughts, particularly Lil’ Kim, Donatella Versace, Kimora Lee Simmons, and the circle of superstars around them.
Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core album — two million copies sold worldwide — was a fun, raunchy romp distilled into one famous image: the diminutive rapper wearing a leopard-print bikini and a fur-lined robe and squatting with both legs opened. Plastered around New York City, the soft-core promo had pedestrians doing double takes. In 1996, the image incited parental debates over whether the rapper was destroying the moral fabric of the country. The TV show Rolanda, hosted by Rolanda Watts, aired an episode titled “Is Lil’ Kim sexualizing our children?” “The poster is vulgar and I think it misrepresents Black women,” said a young woman on the daytime show. “She made people feel like that’s all we about. That’s all women are about. Showing our body,” said another.
Behind the salacious visual and lyrics about diamonds, stilettos, and fellatio, Kimberly Jones was a young woman trying to exert her power in a man’s world. “Lil’ Kim is what I use to get money,” she explained of her stage persona to the Washington Post, “a character I use to sell my records.” The rapper was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on July 11,…
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