AFTER HALF A CENTURY, DC HIP HOP CULTURE CONTINUES TO PUSH BOUNDARIES

Much of DC’s Hip Hop streetwear style encompasses aspiration, inventiveness, remixing existing forms, customization, and individualization. As the invention of Black and Brown working class youth, Hip Hop style has been criticized, stereotyped, and oversimplified in the ways that institutional racism affects most marginalized people’s cultural expressions. Pushing at the boundaries is an overarching tenet of hip hop style, and inevitably, what hip hop has started, mainstream culture has adopted, adapted, and appropriated