Million-dollar bling and Swiss know-how: inside hip hop’s obsession with watches
The three most mentioned brands in lyrics remain Rolex, Audemars Piguet (specifically the Royal Oak) and Patek Philippe (usually the Nautilus) but, as more artists have become true afficionados, the range of name-drops has increased. Today, academic papers, such as Bling Bling: The Economic Discourses of Hip Hop by Alf Rehn and David Sköld, dissect the socio-political symbolism behind ‘wrist candy’, but whatever the reason for the connection, there is usually a common thread - namely that these timepieces are rare, coveted and expensive.
Sean John Combs
A man of many names, Sean Combs’ (aka Puff Daddy, Puffy, P Diddy and just plain Diddy) love of watches is well known and he has frequently been spotted wearing some of the most expensive and covetable models on the market, including a £1m Richard Mille RM 11-03 McLaren.
Tupac Shakur’s Bandanas and Hotel Bills up for Auction
In late 2019, Gotta Have Rock and Roll launched The”Rock & Roll Pop Culture Auction,” which included a vast array of collectible memorabilia from artists that included Michael Jackson, Lil Kim, the Beatles and Banksy. The sale has now received a fresh array of goods, including seven new Tupac pieces that range from recognizable to niche.
Frequently seen wearing one of his many bandannas, Tupac’s headwear of choice became a signature of sorts, making the two examples including in this auction the collection’s crown jewels. Provided by “a very close family friend of Tupac’s,” blue pre-tied and untied red options are both on hand, each estimated to sell for $2,000 USD to $4,000 USD.
Elsewhere, the auction offers a Polaroid photograph of Tupac with his Outlaw Immortalz group (estimated to sell for at least $2,000 USD), a handwritten envelope that held a letter sent from Tupac to a woman named Simi Chouhan ($2,000 USD), an original Death Row Records press release for “All Eyez On Me Book 1 & 2” ($200 USD) and bills from Tupac’s 1996 Mondrian Hotel stay, complete with signed receipt ($200 USD). Each item is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
1 of 6 2 of 6 3 of 6 4 of 6 5 of 6 6 of 6
View the new Tupac items on Gotta Have Rock and Roll’s website, with bidding set to end at the beginning of April. At time of writing, only three of the seven lots have bids, meaning several are likely to remain available until a buyer surfaces.
Most recently, Shakur’s “Me Against the World” re-emerged for its 25th anniversary in a new vinyl edition.
Is It OK to Use Connections to Jump the Line for a Specialist?
Before the pandemic, I managed to score discounted student tickets to an opening-night concert for a major symphony orchestra, featuring a star soloist renowned for a dynamic style of playing. I was familiar with the soloist’s work and was thrilled about seeing a live performance for the first time. In talking with a musician friend about the upcoming performance, she shared with me that she had heard rumors about “less than appropriate” encounters between this soloist and other student performers. Neither she nor anyone she knew had firsthand experience of this, but the fact that she mentioned it had me questioning whether I should attend. On one hand, rumors may amount to nothing more than just that; on the other, the art world has certainly not been immune to predatory individuals occupying positions of prestige and power — individuals who are often only unmasked by what begins as “rumors.” Would it have been ethical of me to cancel my ticket to prevent contributing to an individual who has reportedly used status and power to prey on younger performers, or would it have been unethical to do so on the basis of unsubstantiated “rumors”? Name Withheld
Versions of the quandary you describe have been much mulled. There are countless people who found a soundtrack for their lives in R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” or Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.” Tupac Shakur’s “Keep Ya Head Up” was, for many, a stirring feminist anthem. The musical world writhes with earworms spawned by multiplatinum artists who have been arraigned or (as in Tupac’s case) convicted on sex-abuse charges.
Still, one person’s vague report of rumors — a rumor about rumors — isn’t a reasonable basis for assuming the guilt of the artist in question. Allegations should, of course, be investigated by competent authorities; the symphony orchestra, too, should look into such claims, if they came to them from a credible source, before deciding to engage the soloist. But it’s not the responsibility of random people who hear a random rumor to look into it.
Suppose, however, that you were confident this musician had engaged in acts of sexual abuse (to give contours to the foggy phrase “less than appropriate”). It’s worth thinking through the ways in which attending the concert might or might not have implicated you in something meriting your disapproval.
When you speak of “contributing,” you perhaps had in mind the money paid for your ticket. Many of us share Kant’s view that it is better if the guilty do not prosper. But even had you been refunded for the canceled ticket and the concert venue unable to resell it, the derisory loss represented by your discounted student ticket would have been borne by the venue and by the orchestra. (Whether the orchestra suspected the bad behavior would be relevant to how you thought about that.) The soloist would almost certainly have been hired for a specific fee, as my friends in the business tell me, and not entitled to a share of the box office. Nor would a single canceled ticket send a message.
It would be a different story if you were part of a large group of boycotters, of course. Still, even if we focus on your solitary decision, there are other ways of thinking about your contribution. Regardless of your action’s practical consequences, you could think that, as the Torah says, you shouldn’t follow a multitude to do evil — that you shouldn’t, directly or indirectly, participate in a significant wrong. To put a finer point on it: You don’t want to take part in an event that honors or elevates a person you know to be a wrongdoer, whether or not that person learns of your views or is affected by your act.
Furthermore, as a morally sensitive person, you may find yourself distracted from the musical experience by the thought of those wrongs. Still, I must admit I have regularly listened with pleasure to recordings made by the conductor Herbert von Karajan and by the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, both of whom, out of expedience or worse, joined the Nazi Party. It clearly is possible to detach an aesthetic experience from the moral offenses of its creators.