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The Power of Hip-hop in the Business World Essay

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Since its conception, Hip-Hop culture has always been popular among young people. Now businesses are beginning to use Hip-Hop cultures popularity among the young people to increase the sales of their products. By advertising fashion, films and other miscellaneous types of products businesses use the hip hop culture to appeal to a target audience. Since the late 1970s, Hip-Hop fashion has changed significantly over the years. As the future approaches it has become a prominent part of the fashion world as a whole across the world and for all ethnicities. During the 1980s, fashion consisted of clothing items like large glasses; Kangol hats multi-finger rings and Adidas sneakers. These items were worn by the "big" hip-hop stars like …show more content…

This was acceptable for a time, but after a while it occurred to Russell Simmons, the president of Run-DMC's label Def Jam Records, that the group should be getting paid for the promotion they were giving to Adidas. He approached the German shoe company about kicking in some money for the act's 1987 "Together Forever Tour." Adidas executives had a skeptical reaction about being associated with rap music, which at that time was known for starting riots. To help change their minds, Simmons invited a couple of Adidas representatives to a Run-DMC show. Christopher Vaughn describes the event in Black Enterprise: "At a crucial moment, while the rap group was performing the song "My Adidas", one of the members yelled out, "Okay, everybody in the house, rock your Adidas!" This resulted with three thousand pairs of sneakers shot in the air. The Adidas executives couldn't reach for their checkbooks fast enough." By the time of the annual Atlanta sports-shoe Super Show that year, Adidas had unveiled its new line of Run-DMC shoes: the Super Star and the Ultra Star-"designed to be worn without laces state Russell Simmons. Before big fashion companies paid any attention to hip-hop, small independent fashion designers supported the hip-hop community through local retail stores. According to Brian McDaniel's, co-owner of Uncle Ralph's, a hip-hop clothing store located in Brooklyn, "these young designers tend to be more in tune with hip-hop culture." Not all

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