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Beyond bringing out some of the biggest names in music-Rihanna, Travis Scott, and Kanye West, with whom he shared an emotional bear hug at his debut show for Louis Vuitton-the creative director has also collaborated with some of the most important new voices on the scene right now, none more weird, wonderful, or boundary-pushing than Lil Uzi Vert. If there is one designer who fully comprehends the influence of the hip-hop multi-hyphenate, it’s Virgil Abloh. Suddenly the idea of drawing boundaries, be they along gender or genre lines, seemed deeply old-fashioned. Besides being a really great clotheshorse, Rocky was carving out space for a new kind of open-minded hip-hop renaissance man, one who was wasn’t confined to any one creative pursuit rather, he dabbled in all of them-music, art, design, film, fashion. But more than that, it won him the respect of some of the most visionary designers of the decade: Rick Owens, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, and most notably Raf Simons. Those no-holds-barred fashion instincts earned Rocky a front row seat at just about every important men’s show in Paris and Milan. In fact, few men (or women for that matter) can claim to rock a babushka with quite the same panache as he does. He had a knack for nailing tricky-to-pull-off runway looks, many of which challenged gender norms (man bags, pearls, etc.). Over on the East Coast, meanwhile, A$AP Mob, a new collective of hip-hop style risk-takers led by a Rakim Myers, a handsome young rapper from Harlem who went by the name ASAP Rocky, was emerging. “For me it comes from a really true place, it was about moving the culture forward, and letting the next generation know they could do this.” “People aren’t used to seeing something so different, a guy who is comfortable wearing women’s clothes,” says Lil B, speaking over the phone from his home in the Bay Area. Four years later, he caused a stir all over again, appearing on ESPN’s SportsNation wearing a sheer shirt, chandelier earrings, and a floppy hat.
Though he’s considered an eccentric outlier of mainstream hip-hop, Lil B hit on the moment when he released “Tight Pants” in 2011, a single in defense of the slinky rock ’n’ roll look.
Lil Wayne caused an online frenzy when he performed at the VMAs in 2011 dressed in women’s leopard-print jeggings. Danny Brown, an indie rapper from Detroit who gained popularity in the early 2010s, claimed to have been refused a record deal by 50 Cent based on the fact that Brown was wearing skinny jeans. In fashion terms, that which divided the old guard from the new came down the proportions of their pants. Within hours of its release on August 25, 2016, the image had spread across social media, igniting a debate that seemed to rage on for months thereafter: Here was a male rapper who dared to command the world of hip-hop, a genre so often defined by hypermasculinity, in a dress. His flamboyant selfies were already the stuff of Instagram legend, brimming with pearl and diamond chokers, fur-trimmed Ugg boots, and colorful Fendi pom-pom keychains that swung from the belt loops of his skinny jeans. The hip-hop Twitterverse for sure knew their guy. Could this really be Jeffrey Lamar Williams, better known as Young Thug, or was this some aspiring performance artist scrambling for Internet fame? Save for the tattoo art creeping up his bejeweled wrists and the twisted dreadlocks poking out from under his conical hat-like a cocktail umbrella, only gigantic-the hip-hop star is barely recognizable. It was the mixtape that launched a thousand memes: Young Thug’s Jeffrey, the cover art of which features the gangly, six-foot-three-inch rapper decked out in a dramatic gown of floor-sweeping periwinkle ruffles.