Hip hop culture as we know it is all about flashiness and appearing rich. The human race has been wearing bling-bling for the last 7500 years; ways before Jesus Christ. The flashy bling-bling is meant to show the audience that the artists have made it in life. Since they are selling a dream to their audience and fans, they have to flaunt their wealth by wearing expensive jewelry. This is part of their ideal job suit. They wear jewelry for the following reasons;
1. As a sign of wealth
Pure gold is an expensive metal. The artists invest their money in jewelry chains hip-hop jewelry that is made of gold alloy to vaunt their wealth, hard work, and success. They want their fans to perceive that they are wealthy even when they are not. Some hip-hop artists are truly wealthy, but they do not usually show it. Whereas some are not so wealthy, but they need their fans to perceive that they have made it in life. That is why you will see many hip-hop artists with huge flashy bling-bling of different types.
2. Social status
Most of these hip-hop artists have started from humble beginnings. They want to show their mates back in the days that they have succeeded and can afford a sophisticated collection of jewelry. When you do not have bling-bling as a hip-hop artist, people tend to consider that your career is not doing well even when it is.
3. Evade entanglement with the law.
Historically hip hop originated from the gangster culture. These were the highly marginalized groups that do barely anything to survive. Such people have a high risk of getting into squabbles with the law. They, therefore, need to walk around with their wealth since they do not trust third-party institutions like banks.
4. Used as a bank
Most of these hip-hop artists get entanglements with the law easily because of their history. They do not want to put their money in the banks because it may be frozen in case a crime is linked to them. They want to be walking around with their money in form of chains and pendants and jewelry of great value. They do this because most of the time, the bank does not trust them to lend them money.
Most of the time hip-hop artists may get arrested for pandering. In case of an arrest, they want to use their jewelry as bill money. They buy the jewelry from pawn shops because they know once they are in trouble they can always return the jewelry and get half the value they bought it as a loan. This is usually used as bail money to bail them out, once they get arrested by the police
In conclusion, hip-hop artists wear jewelry for different reasons according to their personalities. Some wear them for decoration as it is the costume for hip hop culture well others do it as their bank.
