BY GLENN GAMBOA
The signs of hip-hop’s influence are everywhere — from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy’s Sean John and Jay-Z’s Rocawear.
It didn’t start out that way.
The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City’s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. Out of that adversity blossomed an authentic style of expression, one that connected with the city’s underserved Black and Latino teens and young adults, and filtered through to graffiti, dance and fashion.
As hip-hop spread throughout New York, so did a culture.
Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, rising from the ashes of a borough ablaze with poverty, urban decay and gang violence. Fifty years later, it is a multi-billion-dollar global industry,
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