Until now hip-hop, a global lingua franca, has been in use seemingly everywhere but in auction rooms. That’s set to change next week when, on September 15, Sotheby’s presents its first sale dedicated to the subject.
The broad spectrum of items on offer—everything from teenage love letters written by Tupac Shakur to graffiti writer Buddy Esquire’s sketchbook—demonstrate that hip-hop has always been a multimedia genre. “It’s a cultural movement that happens to include music,” says Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice president and senior specialist, who organized the show with Monica Lynch, former president of Tommy Boy Records (and the label’s first hire), who notes, “A sale of this kind is a little bit overdue.”
Though hip-hop is an existing collectible category, it didn’t have an auction “home.” Traditionally, explains Hatton, this world has been very focused on specific collecting categories, like cars, jewelry, books, and contemporary art. Hip-hop, she says, “is the sum of all of its parts, and if you take a part of it out, it’s not itself anymore.” Sotheby’s team of experts believes that creating a centralized, multimedia platform for this genre will be a boon for sellers and buyers. “What I think is really important here,” says Lynch, “is that the overwhelming majority of the people who are consigning to this auction are the artists and creators themselves, and that they are going to be recognized. I would say most of them are already very, very recognized, [but] if this expands or brings them a new audience, or people say, ‘Yeah, it’s about time so-and-so got repped,’ that’s a great thing.”
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“Sotheby’s selling hip-hop isn’t transforming anything,” adds Hatton. “We’re not elevating it: Hip-hop is hip-hop. Whether we have this auction or not, it’s been mainstream; it’s a massive global force [and] it has been for a long time.”
Indeed, hip-hop’s influence on fashion is enduring. Lynch recalls being seated at a dinner across from Karl Lagerfeld in the early 1990s and “the only thing he wanted to talk about was TLC.” The sale includes items designed and worn by MC Sha-Rock and, spectacularly, Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” jackets. Also iconic is the crown the Notorious B.I.G. wore in his last portrait sitting. Hypebeasts are sure to go wild for the Louis Vuitton x Supreme trunks on offer. Perhaps even rarer than those are a number of jackets that were made only for crews or for staff, as in the case of a Carharrt topper with a Shawn Stussy–designed logo made for Tommy Boy employees.
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Even the lots that date to the 1980s look of the moment. The essentials of the hip-hop uniform—tracksuits, jeans, T-shirts, jackets, sneakers—are the core of a modern wardrobe. But none of the garments or the styles captured by the photographers’ work in the sale could ever be described as basic. Lynch calls attention to the “DIY customization” of many of the pieces, and also to luxury’s “strange history with hip-hop.” (Note Dapper Dan’s Louis Vuitton jacket, circa 1988.)
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“The hip-hop community always adapted,” she continues. “They adopted and adapted. I think Carhartt was pretty shocked when it realized that a huge amount of its customer base was up in Harlem and in the Bronx. Slick Rick was always wearing Clarks Wallabees shoes. I don’t think they were marketing to a Slick Rick, but you know, the hip-hop community took brands that were known with different audiences and flipped them, turned them inside out, and they made them their own.” Luxury isn’t only defined by logos; scarcity is part of the equation. In many cases, notes Hatton, the quest for unique self-expression turned artists into designers. Fab 5 Freddy’s gold and diamond MTV ring is a case in point. (The artist hosted the network’s show Yo! MTV Raps.)
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The sale will be an introductory experience for some, a nostalgic one for others. Hatton hopes it will be cheering for all. “I think something important about hip-hop is that it’s uplifting,” she says. “There are some markets where money is made by making you feel like you’re not good enough, you’re not beautiful enough, or smart enough, or rich enough, or whatever, so the motivation for purchasing certain things is because it will make you look better or smarter or more sophisticated. And hip-hop is very different. It’s very much celebrating who you are and creating something great out of nowhere. That is what to me art is.”
