Is Jewelry Just an Accessory or an Extension of Ourselves?
On an October Hollywood evening at LA Fashion Week, a panel glittered with not just the sequins of attendees but the luminescence of intellect as author Vikki Tobak delved into the crystalline narrative of “Ice Cold,” her tome on hip hop’s dalliance with jewelry. Alongside her, luminaries like designer Maxwell Osbourne, the ever-inventive Lilian Shalom, and the avant-garde Alligator Jesus, with SSENSE’s own Corey Stokes orchestrating the creative symphony, they unraveled the gilded thread of hip hop’s most ornate fascinations.
Hip hop has always clung to jewelry like a signature cologne, each piece a fragrant note in a rapper’s aromatic profile. The genre has seen artists adorned in lustrous chains and rings that do more than sparkle—they narrate. And it’s this bejeweled lexicon that Tobak eloquently parses in her book.
The discussion, swathed in the opulence of LA Fashion Week, featured Tobak and her distinguished coterie, with the dialogue honing in on an oft-ignored facet of pop culture: the profound identity forged in carats and cuts for hip hop’s venerated names.
Stokes, with a keen eye for authenticity, waxed poetic about the authenticity that personal jewelry lends to a photoshoot. Osbourne nodded in agreement, contemplating how these glittering totems serve as banners for narratives larger than life—of home, of kinship, of towering achievements.
In an industry where milestones are as coveted as the diamonds themselves, Osbourne illuminated the ritual of “chain day”—a celebratory gifting of chains marking an artist’s ascent to record label royalty. Meanwhile, Tobak highlighted jewelry as a silent orator of personal creed, citing Nipsey Hussle’s Malcolm X chain as an emblematic whisper of his convictions.
The panel, spurred by Tobak’s insights, then meandered into personal favorites. Alligator Jesus heralded Biggie Smalls’ Jesus pendant as the apex of iconic, while Osbourne extolled Ghostface Killah’s eagle cuff, worn not as mere accessory but as heraldic armor. Shalom expressed adoration for Flava Flav’s timepiece necklace—a literal tick-tocking heart of his persona—while Stokes appreciated label pendants as symbols of artistic rite of passage and collective memory.
The narrative thread woven through the panel suggested a fusion of artistry and jewelry, where the jewels themselves are as pivotal to the persona as the lyrics and beats. This was epitomized in the collaboration between Alligator Jesus and Lil Nas X—twenty-six creations that transcended mere adornment, to the point that even Nas’s waxen effigy demanded its own grills to capture the essence of the artist.
The panel’s consensus? In hip hop, jewelry is far from mere ornamentation; it is the embodiment of legacy, the glinting herald of identity, and an artist’s most eloquent, yet silent, orator.
You can go buy Tobak’s book here
Written by Vanessa Vasquez