Hip-hop started to take root in New York in the early 1970s, and it only took about a decade to blossom and bear fruit in the form of a movement we still carry on today. What you know about being “fresh?”
Fresh is about making hard times look good. “If you go home and you got roaches and 10 people living in an apartment, the only way you can … feel some kind of status is [with] what you have on your body,” hip-hop legend Dame Dash once said. He knew that by being fresh, we could build a new identity that took us out of our environments.
Being “fresh” was a trend that started in New York in the 80s, popularized by Run DMC wearing the iconic Kangol hats to Doug E. Fresh’s last name. Fresh became a cultural phenomenon that inspired future cultural innovators, like Outkast, who released its platinum record “So Fresh, So Clean” in 2001.
Many of us have heard the expression “fresh to death,” but the reality is that no matter how many generations come and go, being fresh has been immortalized into a timeless movement.
The fresh movement is just one example of how Black culture has the power to impact the world, and more importantly to enable us to build our own unique identities in any environment. We ain't’ fresh? OF course we are!