The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City’s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. Out of that adversity blossomed an authentic style of expression, one that connected with the city’s underserved Black and Latino teens and young adults, and filtered through to graffiti, dance and fashion.“Hip-hop goes beyond the music,” said C.
“Hip-hop knows how to put butts in seats, no matter what context you’re in, and that’s what businesses want,” said Harrison, who is also a professor in the University of Central Florida’s DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program. “Emotion, return on emotion — that’s what hip-hop does differently. They have another level of emotion.”
“In America, in a capitalist society, how else do you show you’ve made it?” Krishnamurthy said. “One thing I kind of joke about is: People can’t see your mortgage. But they can see a nice chain. They can see the clothes that you have on. That is an immediate signal.”“You have a genre that historically has a lot of people who grew up with little to nothing,” Krishnamurthy said. “The aspiration is inherent.
Adidas was the first major company that saw rappers as potential business partners, Friedman said. But they had to be convinced. Now that hip-hop is a multibillion dollar industry with widespread influence, it’s easy to forget it wasn’t always Courvoisier and Versace for its stars. Companies of all sorts now court rappers and their audiences, hoping to join the ranks of Timberland — which at first resisted associating with the genre it saw as being counter to its working-class base — Hennessy cognac and anything Gucci as hip-hop approved brands.