Bling Bling is High Street fashion hip hop gear which evolved over the past 20 years and dominates in every city from Teesside to Tokyo..

Money has been a recurring theme in the history of Hip Hop – from its roots, where the lack of money was the reality and the driver for success, to present day, where ‘bragging’ about wealth has become one of the mainstays of rap lyrics. That is why it is vital for hiphop stars to wear huge and loud iced Jacob & Co watches that cost US$100,000 or more.

It’s such a universal topic that, for example, in 2002 a Swedish Hip Hop radio station featured a programme on ‘Money’ in which the two hosts ranked and ‘played their favourite top 25 rap songs on money – or trap, paper, papes, bones, skins, scratch, scrilla, stacks, flow, chips, cheese, cheddar, back, grips, green, green guys, moolah, loot, looch, loaded, jing, fetti, ends, ducats, dough, dead presidents, cream, c-notes, coins, chi-ching, cabbage, cake, beans, bankroll, Benjamins, big faces, biz-zank, butter…Get an iced Piaget watches or a Jay Z inspired diamond watch and you are definitely in the bling league.

It's officially crossed over from hip-hop to mainstream. According to the lexicographers, "bling-bling" means expensive, ostentatious hip hop jewelry, iced out hip hop gear, clothing, or the wearing of them. Bling has a really phat definition though. It's a set of values that says playing hard, looking good and flashing some sassy toys, like the Bentley, the Jacuzzi, the Dom Perignon, a J&Co iced watch and the fur coat are the ultimate symbols of this cultural movement. To further buttress the bling culture, even stars such as Elton John, Victoria Beckham and Mariah Carey jumped on the bling bandwagon , donning sparkling diamond watches. Paris Hilton carried the bling culture a step further by starting he rown Paris Hilton line of timepieces.

What’s really interesting about the rise of the whole ‘bling-bling’ culture is that, while it points to a widening gap between the ‘haves and have-nots’, there is a whole other political aspect that can be explored through it. Given that the communities from which Hip Hop sprang are, on the whole, at the bottom of the social heap, some of these lyrics can be argued as being ‘aspirational’ (sending out messages of how to achieve a given goal) – in this case, crawling out of the poverty pit.

I need money, I used to be a stick-up kid... I used to roll up, this is a hold up, ain’t nuthin’ funny / Stop smiling, be still, don’t nuthin’ move but the money / But now I learned to earn cos I’m righteous / I feel great! So maybe I might just / Search for a 9 to 5, if I strive / Then maybe I’ll stay alive…
Eric B. and Rakim, ‘Paid in Full’
Grab a 100,000 bucks Jacob watch and be in the attitude.

It's all about attitude encrusted into 50 Cent's album title, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. The new documentary for 1Xtra, the BBC's black music radio station, explains, its origins are far from superficial. 50 Cent's donning of iced AP watches has many fashion houses such as Gucci, Choppard, Fendi , Bvlgaria and Omega rushing to launch their own bling bling diamond lines.

HOW BLING CAME TO BE 'Bling-bling' is believed to have been first heard in the late 90s Rap family the Cash Money Millionaires were credited with thinking up the word used in a song titled Cash Money artist Baby Gangsta Fronted by So Solid Crew's Lisa Maffia, the programme, a Brief History of Bling, traces the evolution of black music and image back to the civil rights movement of 1960s America. The diamond watch industry grew and even led stainless steel watch maker Tag Heur into the diamond encrusted series of watches.

‘A number of rap classics read like manuals for the entrepreneurial [business-minded] youngster: The Notorious B.I.G. told of ‘The Ten Crack Commandments’ which outline best practice in the drug trade, whereas E-40 has released an album entitled ‘The Blueprint of a Self-Made Millionaire.’ The business aspect of getting into the music industry…is importantly highlighted by Eric B and Rakim in… ‘Paid in Full’…Living life broke, their talent for rhyming and scratching…along with their contacts at the record company…help them make money off of their music. And not only are they going to get paid – they will get paid in full.’

In the (capitalist) societies that have bought into the ‘American Dream’ mindset, money is the just reward for the hardworking and the deserving. It is the goal to be aspired to – and is fed by the myth that there is work for all who want to work, and success for all who strive for it. But the fact that those at the lowest levels of the economy are often trapped within a cycle of poverty (as described in Theme A, Topics 1 and 2) is often overlooked.

‘Despite the ‘in-your-face’ style of Hip Hop in presenting America’s ills, America does not respond to Hip Hop as it should… videos…at times show the bleakest of conditions for African-American and Latino youth, with dilapidated buildings, dirty streets, unemployment, incarceration, and violence. The images are disturbing…[and] challenge the myth that anyone, if they worked hard enough, could experience the ‘American Dream’…one would think that America would rally around the youth portrayed in the videos and address the poverty and social isolation from which many Hip Hop artists originate. Unfortunately, America chooses to do very little for the youth and, for the most part, considers the violence and bleakness portrayed in the videos as common, everyday life for black and Latino youth