This article has been handpicked from the Okayplayer editorial archives and included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative. The article has ...

Imagine getting a birthday invitation to dress like rappers in 2025. What exactly do you even wear? Skinny jeans? The 50-plus-year-old genre has had distinct moments within the fashion industry in the ...

In August 1973, the Jamaican-born Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell held his first block party in the Bronx, bringing the Jamaican sound system culture to America and inadvertently providing the first ...

A few of old-school hip-hop's finest. Photo illustration by Ellie Skrzat for Slate. Photos by Vince Bucci/Getty Images, Stringer PN/Reuters, Blake Sell/Reuters, and Mario Anzuoni/Reuters. This summer ...

T-shirts printed the gorgeous scowl of Tupac Shakur were ubiquitous when I was in middle school, but the only one I’ve ever wanted popped up about a decade and a half after his passing. It features a ...

On August 11, 1973, hip-hop was born, changing music and popular culture forever. But in each decade since, the genre has been distinct, with its own style, stars and sounds. In honor of hip-hop’s ...

The moments captured in this book are truly incredible. Some of the images you’ll see include vintage Biggie rocking the crowd at Harlem during the Hoodshock Festival in 1996, a candid studio photo ...

Salt-N-Pepa were the First Ladies of Hip-Hop in the mid-to-late 1980s. But as the 1990s dawned, MC Lyte and Queen Latifah had emerged with more “serious” musical content that threatened to knock the ...

What started out as a family tradition turned into a priority when Robert Gunn, owner of ILLY’S Fire Pizza, lost his job working for a telephone company. Robert owns the ‘80s-’90s hip hop-themed pizza ...

Hip-hop may have started out in the park, but has blossomed into a cultural force worldwide, with people from all walks of life claiming it as their own. The early '90s marked the beginning of this ...