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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. hip hop culture is said to be made up of four core elements. There's rapping, DJ-ing, b-boying, also known as breakdancing, and graffiti. However, you could probably add one more element to that list, and that's fashion. From Run-DMC's leather jackets, Fedoras, and Adidas, to Dapper Dan's Monogram tracksuits, to LL Cool J's Kangol cap, hip hop has always set itself apart.

One of the biggest fashion statements was, and still is, jewelry. In the '80s, it was all about that gold and big chains, often influenced by the kind worn by neighborhood heavies. The late '90s came to be known as the bling era. hip hop took the charts and the world by storm, and some of those profits were memorialized in one-of-a-kind pieces encrusted with diamonds. Of course, there are the grills or the mouthpieces that various artists have worn in their teeth. These grills became so popular that even Madonna wears one.

A new exhibition, currently open at the American Museum of Natural History, spotlights the history and impact of hip hop jewelry through the years, and it features pieces commissioned and worn by stars, including Biggie Smalls, Nicki Minaj, A$AP Rocky, and Drake. It's called Ice Cold, and it was inspired by a book with the same name, written by Vikki Tobak. Vikki served as guest curator for the show and is here today, right across the table from me. Hey, Vikki. Welcome to the show.

Vikki Tobak: Hey.

Kousha Navidar: Joining her is a woman beloved to hip hop fans, especially here in New York, the one and only Roxanne Shante, who has a ring in the exhibit and is just an all-around badass. Hey, Roxanne.

Roxanne Shante: I love it, I love it. Thank you. How are you?

Kousha Navidar: Good. Thanks. Great to have you here. Listeners, is there a piece of jewelry you remember a rapper wearing that stood out to you? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. What's a piece of jewelry you remember really liking or being impressed by? Do you have favorite looks? Do you love a specific clock worn by Flavor Flav like me? Give us a call, 212-433-9692. Vikki, I'm so intrigued by this. How did the exhibit come about to you? You don't automatically associate the Natural History Museum with bling, right?

Vikki Tobak: I know. It's a surprise to me as well. They have the Hall of Gems and Minerals there, which has every gem, mineral, geode known to man. I knew about that space, but they have a space within there which does temporary exhibits. One of the former curators had put the bug in the ear of the museum saying, "Hey, there's this new book out about hip hop jewelry. This would make a lot of sense in here." I love that because putting it in the context of the history of gems and jewelry and how we choose to adorn ourselves through the lens of hip hop I think is a really beautiful thing.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Roxanne, how early in the process did you get involved?

Roxanne Shante: I was involved pretty early in it. One of the main things about it was it was surprising to me how many people wanted to be on board, how many people wanted to submit jewelry. Usually, you just think that a rapper/hip hopper doesn't want to separate from their jewels. That's the main thing because when it comes to hip hop, the first thing you hear is everybody wants to, "I'm dropping gems, I'm dropping jewels, but I'm holding on to these."

The main thing was when she reached out, everyone wanted to submit something. It was like, "Listen, I want to be a part of not just history, but American history." That's the main thing of doing this whole thing. I was really impressed and honored to be involved from the beginning.

Kousha Navidar: You have a ring in there, right?

Roxanne Shante: Yes, I do.

Kousha Navidar: Can you tell a little bit about what your piece is that you added in there?

Roxanne Shante: The ring that I have placed inside of there is called the Juice Crew Ring. Unlike all the other pieces of jewelry, this is a piece of jewelry that could not be purchased. It had to be earned. It was earned by the things that you did in the community. That's what made this ring so special and made it so different. It was given to me by Sal Abbatiello, who started the Juice Crew, along with Mr. Magic.

One of the main things about it is that you had to do things in the community. Say, for instance, because we're going from being from poverty to priceless, literally, that's what hip hop has done. We have went from poverty to priceless. During that time, there were so many people that were in need. You had to feed certain people, you needed to pay rent. Maybe somebody needed to lay away their loved one, meaning like pay for a burial, or you had to sponsor a bus trip. There were so many things that had to be done.

Then once you reached a certain level where they felt that you had what was called juice, meaning having control in your neighborhood, then they would give you a ring. There you didn't have to go around and tell people, like, "I'm the person you need to talk to. I'm the person with the juice. I'm the person with the clout. I'm the person who can help you." Instead, you just wore the ring. People would see the ring and automatically say, "Excuse me, can I talk to you for a second? I'm having a problem."

It just represented being a problem solver or being that person in the community, but it represented hip hop. That's the reason why I separated with it, because I felt like that was something people needed to know, that all hip hop jewelry is not just about showing off and being fresh and everything else, that it really has something behind it.

Kousha Navidar: How did it feel for you when you got that ring?

Roxanne Shante: I cried. I was honored. I was doing everything. I wasn't doing these things in the community to earn the ring, I was just doing the things in the community, and then they recognized what you do. When I realized that all of my efforts and all my work was being recognized, it was an honor for me.

Kousha Navidar: Vikki, like we said in the intro from the very beginning, fashion and jewelry have been a big part of hip hop culture. Where did the foundational look of the gold chains and upscale watches come from?

Vikki Tobak: Roxanne is absolutely right. The jewelry in the show or hip hop jewelry in general, there's a lot of meaning behind it. You can often tell what neighborhood the person is from, what crew they're with, what is important to them in terms of what they want to represent, whether it's an [unintelligible 00:06:22] pendant, or an ankh or even a label chain. They're a Rockefeller pendants. There's a lot of meaning in each piece. I think that that's something that is common in hip hop and in fashion.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, just in case you just joined us, we're talking about the Ice Cold exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. We're here with the guest curator, Vikki Tobak, and rapper, Roxanne Shante who has a juicy ring in the exhibit. The exhibit is open now. Is that right or is it very soon?

Roxanne Shante: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: If you want to check it out, it's in the Hall of Gemstones, which I thought was such a clever idea. Have you two been there to see folks go in and look in the Hall of Gemstones? What's the reaction been like?

Vikki Tobak: Yes. Fun story. After we had our opening night, I actually went back that weekend, the first Saturday that it was open because I wanted to be like a fly on the wall of when people in the community come to see it. I just went in there in my little Nike sweatsuit with my hoodie on and just listen. It's been amazing from kids from all over the boroughs coming through, from all over the world, really, people that come in and remember like, "Oh, I remember, this Jam Master Jay Run-DMC pendant. Oh, I remember seeing Nas perform in this QB pendant," or they'll see Nicki Minaj's Barbie pendant, "I've only seen that in videos and here I can be up close and personal with it."

I think it brings up a lot of memories and it brings up a lot of questions of how we use these things as a status of making it transcending our circumstances, communicating our identity. That's really the bigger message behind the book and the show.

Kousha Navidar: We just got a text in here that I want to read. It says, "Growing up in the '80s, it has to be the gold chains worn by Eric B & Rakim. In the '90s, Ghostface Killah rocked an incredible Versace medallion and a massive eagle bracelet. Those should all be in a jewelry hall of fame. Ha ha." Thank you so much.

Vikki Tobak: Well, the good-

Kousha Navidar: Yes, go ahead.

Vikki Tobak: -I was going to say the good news is-

Roxanne Shante: [unintelligible 00:08:34].

Vikki Tobak: -do you have the Ghost? Yes, we do have the Ghostface eagle medallion in the show. Then we have the Run-DMC Adidas pendant from Jam Master Jay's family who rent it.

Kousha Navidar: There's another one as well. There's Slick Rick who served as an advisor to the exhibition and was one of the most famous rappers of that era to wear layers of jewelry. Roxanne, can you remember when you first saw Rick and what your first impression was?

Roxanne Shante: I remember the first time seeing Slick Rick wearing his jewelry. I said to myself, "He must have an incredible crew with him," because you're talking the '80s in New York City where if you walked around with that, that meant that you were able to walk around with it. He definitely represented that, but he has also always been one of our icons, one of our hip hop heroes. We knew for a fact like, "Okay, Rick is definitely in the exhibit, like smack dab in the middle of it because he never changed."

A lot of people changed their jewelry as time went on. Sometimes you would see a difference where now it would go from a rope chain to a Cuban link, to a Gucci link, to a [unintelligible 00:09:39] bow where you notice that it started to get smaller, even though it was worth more. It would go from 10 carat to 14 carat to only diamonds so the difference, but Rick never changed. He just enhanced it.

Now he had the big rope chain and he add the diamonds [laughs] the Gucci link and then he put the rubies in it, those type of things. We noticed that with Rick. Rick is always represented if they had to have a picture of hip hop jewelry, you would have to say, "Have Slick Rick as that photograph."

Kousha Navidar: One of the most prominent pieces on display is Slick Rick's diamond and crusted eye patch and--

Roxanne Shante: All the way down to the eye patch.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. He was known for gold but this is platinum. Vikki, this is a two-parter for you. When did the medal of choice switch to platinum and what's the story behind that Eyepiece and the Crown?

Vikki Tobak: Gold is always a standard. Gold has always been, and always still used to this day. There was a period in the '90s where people like Jay-Z, specifically, started to rap about using platinum. This was also a time when a lot of rappers started to get educated about their materials and like you said, 10k versus 14k. People started realizing like, "Oh, platinum, it looks like white gold, but it's a lot more expensive. It's a lot more rare." Early '90s you started seeing a lot more of that, and then Diamonds started to be used much more commonly.

That really tracks with the industry getting bigger, making more money, companies being formed, Rockefeller started being born, companies, Def Jam. You started to see these entrepreneurs who started to understand their role, not just as artists, but as building-- You and I were talking in the Green room, Roxanne, and we were talking about how for a lot of folks in hip hop, they're the first generation to build wealth for their family.

Roxanne Shante: Yes, absolutely.

Kousha Navidar: Sorry, tell me about that.

Roxanne Shante: Well, when you think about it, I talk about it very often, I'm always saying that we went from poverty to priceless. You're talking about hip hop, where literally, we started in the parks and we used to use electricity from the lamppost. Everything about us was the struggle. Then we wanted our jury to be able to actually represent our success. You would notice that the more a person would wear jewelry or the type of jewelry they would wear would show you their level of success. Now where it went from big gold bracelets, then it switched to Rolex watches. Then it switched to other watches, then we went to Cartiers.

Then it went from the larger pieces of jewelry to the smaller pieces of jewelry. Now, you realize the difference where if I have this chain that only has these three diamonds, but these three diamonds are three carats a piece. It's worth more than 10 rope chains.

Kousha Navidar: You're bringing up, I heard you say Rolex, I heard you talk about entire brands that formed around this. I know that in hip hop at the start, there were fashion brands that didn't want to dress or be affiliated with hip hop, but then as it got more popular, they dove head in first, absolutely. Was it similar with jewelry? Was there hesitation? Vikki, do you have a sense of that history there?

Vikki Tobak: Brands like Tiffany, Cartier, Van Cleef, the rappers weren't really going to them because they weren't making the styles that they really wanted.

Roxanne Shante: The jewelry wasn't large enough.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, interesting.

Vikki Tobak: Yes. Now, it's changed meaning you are looking at chunkier links. You look at Tiffany, they're starting like ASAP Ferg or Ferg as he's known of, Ferg now was the first hip hop ambassador for Tiffany starting a few years ago. You started to see Jay and Beyonce in their advertisements. Just like with so much in hip hop, the brands understand that hip hop are the cool kids-

Roxanne Shante: Sells everything.

Vikki Tobak: -and sells everything. [chuckles]

Roxanne Shante: [unintelligible 00:13:42].

Vikki Tobak: Everything. Definitely back in the day, that was not on the radar for big fashion brands and for big jewelry brands.

Kousha Navidar: Do you remember, Roxanne, some of the first brands that actually did start to go into here for jewelry?

Roxanne Shante: I also remember some of the first brands that wouldn't buzz us in, literally. Like when we finally were starting to make enough money to be able to go and shop on East Madison Avenue and the boutique row is what we used to call it, the boutique row. We could always go into Bloomingdale's, we could always go into all these other stores. Going onto the boutique row, we still didn't look like the consumer that they were used to, so because of that, that's the reason why we came up with our own jewelers.

That's the reason why we were embraced by the Canal Street Jewelers and going to the Colosseums in Queens where there was open arms where they would just say, "Okay, come, spend with us. We'll make what you want." That's where we came up with coming up with our own pieces because even though we wanted to go there and we wanted to purchase those things, there was still a time where we would not be buzzed in.

It is like, "Argh, nah." At this time, we're still young, so you're thinking everybody's under 18 and you're coming and you're showing up with show money. You're showing up with a shopping bag full of money, literally. You're like, "I got a shopping bag full of money." We weren't getting credit cards yet. We didn't know what credit cards were and we didn't know what it was to start being able to get with these companies and be able to say, "Okay, listen, I would like to make a partnership with you. Let's do this," because we weren't doing commercials yet.

Vikki Tobak: Or branded.

Roxanne Shante: Or branding yet.

Vikki Tobak: It's funny because I just thought there was an instance early on and it was obscure and very ahead of its time. In 2005, the watch brand, Audemars Piguet did a Jay-Z-branded watch. They did their Royal Oak Offshore Jay-Z Edition, which was a limited edition. It celebrated 10 years of Jay in the music business. [laughs] We have that watch in the show at the exhibit and that was an early-- Now you have Travis Scott collaborating with AP-

Roxanne Shante: Absolutely.

Vikki Tobak: -and the watch brands are actually quite plugged in to who's doing what. That was, I guess an early brand that was tapped into hip hop's power.

Roxanne Shante: That was able to see the future and understand what was getting ready to happen.

Kousha Navidar: It was like once the commercials came up and once they saw the market-

Roxanne Shante: Once the commercials-

Kousha Navidar: -they got buzzed in.

Roxanne Shante: -and then they understood. They understood that hip hop was here to stay because hip hop originally started off as a genre of music that you had to outgrow in order to be successful, in order to be considered an adult. You couldn't listen to hip hop and then go to your job and listen to it on your job. You had to turn it off and turn to jazz or turn it off and turn to another type of music because you didn't want them to know that you still listen to hip hop.

Then they understood that now, hip hop is in everything. I think that was just a way of watching hip hop grow. It's a beautiful thing to be able to sit back and see where it is now. Now to understand the embracing of the brands and to see where we are now, it's just a beautiful thing.

Kousha Navidar: That's such a great segue because spoiler alert, my favorite part of this piece that I saw-

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: -A$AP Rocky?

Vikki Tobak: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: The Lego guy?

Roxanne Shante: Yes.

Vikki Tobak: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: [chuckles] What? Can you talk about that a little bit? What is it? Where'd it come from?

Vikki Tobak: Yes. That was a piece that Rocky made with jeweler, Alex Moss, who's one of the crop of young, really successful hot jewelers right now. It comes with this wave. The new generation loves to be really playful with their jewelry. You're starting to see a lot more multicolored stones being used, a lot more anime and cartoon themes. This is all stuff that they grew up on. Just like we'd reference stuff that we grew up on when we were younger. That Lego man is symbolic for Rocky of that playfulness, the use of materials, and just that out-the-box thinking.

Also, this new generation, they stand on the shoulders. They saw all the pieces that Roxanne and everyone who came before them were making, and so this is just their way of remixing, customization, all the stuff that hip hop does.

Kousha Navidar: Sampling.

Roxanne Shante: Sampling.

Vikki Tobak: Sampling. Absolutely, absolutely.

Roxanne Shante: Absolutely. Being able to see the things that you had as a child and say, "Imagine if I had one of these just made in diamonds."

Vikki Tobak: Oh, yes.

Vikki Tobak: Well, we have a Sony PlayStation controller from Just Blaze in the show too that's diamond and gold. There's a couple of instances of that.

Kousha Navidar: I loved it. How do you, Roxanne, see the taste in jewelry evolving? What's a trend that resonates for you or you're like, "I don't know about that"?

Roxanne Shante: For me, smaller pieces that mean and cost so much. Now, what I've been able to see is that I love the elegance. I'm seeing them with jewelry that you would just, you know me, I call it opera-type jewelry. I'm noticing now that our female rappers are starting to wear estate-looking pieces. Pieces that make you say, "Wow. Now that is absolutely beau--" I'm talking breakfast at Tiffany's type jewelry, along with the dress. If I could fit the dress, that would be jewelry enough for me. I could do the bun all day but the rest of it you know?

[laughter]

Vikki Tobak: Why do they call quiet luxury? It's because I'm going through a quiet luxury moment.

Roxanne Shante: Yes. It's so beautiful to me because I just love it. I love it. I love the softness of the way the jewelry has now changed.

Kousha Navidar: [unintelligible 00:19:19].

Roxanne Shante: I love it.

Vikki Tobak: Well, I think artists like Pharrell, he started wearing one big Emerald and then you see that with Tyler who's so inspired by a lot of what Pharrell does. It'll be like, "You know that one gem is-

Roxanne Shante: Is a house.

Vikki Tobak: -the top top." That is true. It might be less jewelry, but the quality-

Roxanne Shante: The quality is incredible.

Vikki Tobak: -the design, yes.

Roxanne Shante: It'd be in the Hall of Gems is just incredible because now when you're going there and you do see the Ice Cold exhibit, you also see so many other beautiful things. You go into the Ice Cold exhibit and you say, "Wow." For me, personally, I stood in there when no one else was around. I had a moment to be in there by myself and I said, "We made it."

Like, "Hip hop has now been etched in stone, has now became a part of American history. Now I can rest easy knowing it could never be erased just because we made it to this building, a building that we would go to and visit as children and felt like how do you get in a museum? What do you do in order to be in a museum? You need to be priceless. It needs to be old. It needs to be here for a long time. It needs to be admired. It needs to be valued, and now it's hip hop."

Kousha Navidar: Yes. I love that you said etched in stone because you are a rapper, and I'm sure you meant this but etched in stone and etched in gems, really.

Roxanne Shante: Etched in gemstones.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, etched in gemstones. That should be something that you put on the title of it. We're wrapping up here real quick. What's your favorite piece?

Vikki Tobak: Oh, gosh. I can't. People ask me that I'm like, "It's like children. I can't say a favorite piece," but maybe I would say the Jam Master Jay Adidas pendant.

Kousha Navidar: Tell us very quickly about that.

Vikki Tobak: It was a piece that was made by Adidas for all three members of Run-DMC. This is the only known surviving piece because a lot of pieces have been lost or melted down or stolen along the way. It was a symbol of that '80s and a group that was just starting to break into pop culture and into the mainstream. It was just a really important piece made an important time.

Kousha Navidar: Roxanne, real quick, besides the juicy ring, what's your favorite piece in there?

Roxanne Shante: My favorite piece is the Biz Markie chain. My career started with my hip hop brother, Biz Markie and we lost him entirely too soon. When I walked into the Ice Cold exhibit, it is the first thing that I saw was his big chain. I remember him walking across the stage with that on his chest, getting ready to perform with me something that I will never be able to see again. To see it there, is the Biz Markie chain.

Kousha Navidar: Well, you can see all of those pieces and more at the American Museum of Natural History. It's the Ice Cold exhibit. We've been here with the guest curator Vikki Tobak and rapper, Roxanne Shante. Thank you both so much for hanging out.

Roxanne Shante: Thank you.

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