Poured Over: Sowmya Krishnamurthy on Fashion Killa

By Jenna Seery / December 9, 2023 at 6:00 am

Fashion Killa by Sowmya Krishnamurthy offers an in-depth look at the significant cultural intersection between hip-hop music and the world of fashion. Krishnamurthy joins us to talk about her career leading up to writing this book, the research she did, gender roles in hip-hop and fashion and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.             

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.         

Featured Books (Episode):
Fashion Killa by Sowmya Krishnamurthy

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Sowmya Krishnamurthy has written a very cool book, you’re gonna think this is a slightly different episode from what we usually do on the show. But I think when Sowmya introduces herself in the book, you will totally understand why we’re doing this. So, Sowmya, bring us in to what you’ve done with this book.

Sowmya Krishnamurthy

My name is Sowmya Krishnamurthy. I am a music journalist, pop culture and now debut author, with my first book Fashion Killa: How Hip Hop Revolutionized High Fashion. And at the time of this recording, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip hop. So of course, I thought this is the best time to write the first anthology about hip hop fashion. It spans from 1973 all the way up to 2023. And it features everything whether you’re a hip hop head, and you want to remember names like Dapper Dan, Pharrell Williams, or Cardi B. Or if you’re somebody who loves fashion and names like Karl Lagerfeld and Coco Chanel interest you. But I’ve got to say it’s also written for the absolute beginner, somebody who knows nothing about either world and just loves American history, or pop culture, or just wants to dress maybe a little bit better the next time they go out.

Okay, and also, let’s look at this jacket for a second. This is kind of amazing.

The jacket is kind of amazing. Yeah, it’s the gall. It’s obviously an homage to McQueen. And the name Fashion Killa comes from an ASAP Rocky song. If fans know that was the record that he named dropped almost 30 name brands, and I thought was that perfect bridge between the worlds of music and fashion?

Okay, so here’s the thing you grew up in Michigan, right?

I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, so shout out to me, Derek Jeter, and that’s about it coming out of Kalamazoo.

How do you end up being a music journalist? I mean, you’re practicing the art of journalism, right, as magazines are having a rough go of it as social media has changed the way we interact with celebrity and fashion. And well, the power they represent, right? So you’re standing on the precipice of like, major, major change in a bunch of different industries. And yet you decide to write a book. How did we get here?

Yeah, I mean, one thing when I see the challenge, of course, I run to it instead of away from it probably, much to the chagrin of my family. One thing about me is growing up, I always knew I wanted to work in the hip hop industry. I’m a kid of the 90s, I would run home from school and watch so many hours of TRL and Yo MTV Raps, reading magazines like Vibe and double XL magazines back then were a big deal and in print, we would get very excited when they would come in the mail. And just being the kid who on every Tuesday was when new music used to come out, buy the CD, rip it open, usually turn my nails bloody because it would be wrapped in this really tight plastic wrap, and then reading the liner notes to know who was the A&R, who was the producer, where were the labels located. So by the time I was old enough to be an intern moved to New York City, I knew all the hotspots, I knew who ran every label, I just was one of those kids who had a voracious appetite for the industry. Now, what’s interesting, I didn’t go to journalism school, I went to the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Go Glue, which is beat Ohio State, if anybody’s listening. And for me, I always thought my dream was to run a company like Adaption for example, like that’s the definitive label. But one thing I think a lot of writers know is you don’t know where your life is going to take you. And through a very circuitous path. I started freelancing. Now I started freelancing, and what we like to call the blog era of hip hop, and that was also a time of change where a lot of the sort of heritage media, many of them were not embracing dot com. They certainly weren’t embracing young writers who are earning their byline on the internet. But that’s how I came up. Of course, I have the print byline, I have the cover stories. But for so many outlets, whether it’s a rolling stone or Village Voice, I cut my teeth online first. And I really utilize social media as a marketing tool for my career. So my entire career as a writer, I’ve been freelance, that 1099 life and I’ve never really had anything but my Gmail, but I think it shows you for my generation, and certainly the next. It really is about this idea of being resourceful and hustling and changing as the landscape changes.

It’s also super hip hop, if you think about it right? It works with the culture of the art and the music. And I just I do want to talk about the evolution of the fashion because when I picked up the book, when you and I set this interview, and I picked up the book, I was like, huh, let’s just see what happens. I remembered a lot more than I thought I did of the 90s. Let’s put it that way. Yes, just like yeah. Oh, right. And you know, there’s this new biography of Tupac Shakur, that’s out. There’s Jonathan Abrams’ history of hip hop, like there’s a lot of really interesting publishing that’s happened but also like Gucci Mane has written a lifestyle book. Like, I remember when people’s parents were wigging out completely over hip hop, because oh, my God, like, they were just…

I think they still are. Yeah, parents just don’t understand is a generational trend.

Right. But I mean, essentially, hip hop is to our culture, what rock’n’roll was, and it is a massive movement. It is not just the art, it is also the politics, and it is also the fashion and who has power and how they use it. And it is more than just what you’re listening to. Absolutely.

And that’s what I wanted to start the book is laying down the pillars of hip hop. Of course, we know emceeing, B-boying, breakdancing, graffiti, the DJ. But fashion has been intrinsic as a part of hip hop, a story that’s kind of gotten told over and over is the famous house party, the rec room party in the Bronx, DJ Kool Herc is spinning this party. And that becomes sort of what we deemed the origin of hip hop. Now, of course, culture is a continuum. As I mentioned in the book, it’s not sort of pinpointed to one day, but we like our milestones. So of course, August 11, 1973, becomes that milestone. What a lot of people don’t know is that party was actually for Kool Herc’s sister, Cindy Campbell. And that was a way for her to crowd fund for her back-to-school wardrobe. So from day one, fashion has been really a seat at the table. So I know a lot of times very easy to think of a hip hop fashion book, it’s going to be a bunch of artists and pretty pictures. Now, of course, there are 40 color images. But I want to also show things like history, sociology, politics, economics, how did all of that interplay into what we ended up seeing in the magazines and music videos, on high fashion runways? And laying down that basis of showcasing how organic fashion was to hip hop from the beginning was very important.

So let’s talk about the research for a second, because I mean, obviously, a lot of this is now available online in some ways, but you know, Vibe magazine’s archive, like is that online? Or is that physically, somewhere, I mean, I remember when Vibe, you know, was still in the incubator phase. And suddenly there it was, yeah, I’m a little older than I’d like to admit. But it was very cool moment. And I had a lot of friends who were writing for it. And just it felt, it felt like a really seismic shift. And it felt like because, you know, it was an incubator, you write about this in the book, but it was incubated at time. And time life at the time. Like if that was where you were getting your resources from, it was a signifier. It was totally a signifier. Let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s talk about vibe, let’s talk about how magazines sort of evolved and how you access that information now.

So this book, for anyone writing nonfiction, is very heavily researched. I felt like I was going back to school in many ways. Every chapter has about 40+ sources. And it runs the gamut, as you mentioned, magazine archives. Some of those archives are available in some of the New York libraries in physical form. But of course, you’ll get pieces of it online, through things like Google Books, places like that. But also, because it’s hip hop, it’s got to be music, music videos, and now podcasts. I mean, I might listen to a three-hour Drink Champs interview, for example, which is a very popular podcast just to glean one or two things for the book. And that’s very much a part of the process is you totally immerse yourself. So to anyone writing a nonfiction book, my first advice — write about something that you either know or that you love, or you want to know and love, because you will be sitting with this subject matter very intimately for a long time. Insofar as magazines, as you said in the 90s, they were so seminal, because this really was a tangible object that came into your mailbox, or you went to the newsstand or the bookstore to pick it up. And for so many people, especially for kids like me, we didn’t grow up in New York, or LA or even Atlanta, so we were so removed from the epicenters that magazines were a portal into this world. You got to go behind the scenes with your favorite artists. You got to learn about parts about the industry, there was investigative pieces. And of course, the passion. You saw how people dress and all of these cooler parts of the country. And now we take it for granted. You just go on Instagram and do a quick scroll or you’re on Tik Tok. And you can see how people dress halfway around the world. But before that, it truly was things like magazines, music videos, or even the cover of albums.

Yeah, I miss physical albums. I’m not a vinyl person. But and maybe I should be. But yeah, that whole, like pulling out the album and seeing the liner notes and reading every single last word. On all of it. It’s just kind of easier to have it in my pocket on my phone, which is, yeah, terrible. But at the same time, you know, it’s nice to just be able to pull up whatever you feel like pulling up as you’re I have one of these people who has just an epic playlist that I keep adding to. And it’s the weirdest. It’s just so weird. But it makes me really happy. Part of the research for me for this episode of the show was going back and listening to stuff that maybe I hadn’t listened to in a minute like LL Cool J and some early early Tupac. And it was it was really interesting for me how quickly I was transported back to a period of time that I hadn’t really thought about in more than a minute. Right? Like, I mean, life gets complicated. Life gets big. You have lots of stuff going on. But I mean, what year were you born, I have to ask.

So I’m a kid of the 80s. Okay, I would be technically an older millennial. So for my era, it’s funny, you always ask people sort of what is their favorite era of music, and it usually aligns about the time they were becoming a teenager because you go through so many important moments, learning to drive. Maybe the first time you fall in love, like all of these sorts of important milestones. So for me the late 90s, early aughts, mid aughts, that’s sort of my sweet spot. Okay, I think I want to say my first early Hip Hop memories were about like the mid 90s, like Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Biggie Smalls, people like that around that 95,96 ish show.

The whole east coast West Coast thing is happening. Rap is really finally finding a toehold on MTV. I mean, MTV was a thing for a really long time. And even David Bowie was like, you know, you really are only playing music by white people like what’s going on here? Yeah. And it was like, MTV was a cultural force. It absolutely like MTV News mattered. Like, they did a lot of really interesting programming and a lot of sort of get out the vote kind of stuff like it really again, it was a it was a moment in time, without a doubt. But it was kind of wild.

I just joked on Twitter recently about sometimes when a music story happens, it’s like I really need Kurt Loder or John Norris, who are the sort of elder statesman who looked totally out of place at MTV, by the way, but they would deliver the serious news. I mean, I’ll never forget it was Kurt Loder, who told us that Kurt Cobain passed, right or Tupac passed, right, Biggie passed, I’ll leave like I remember so vividly. They were not to exaggerate. But that was like Walter Cronkite for that younger generation delivering news that CNN wasn’t covering. There was no such thing as TMZ social media made was eons away. And it’s funny for all of us, regardless of what generation of MTV you grew up in. It’s so interesting how we share that just that commonality. So it doesn’t matter where you grew up, what your background was, we all have the shared cultural moments. And I think there’s something really special about that. It’s funny, as I’ve talked to people about this book, time, and again, they talk about the nostalgia, remembering certain outfits, they had that first pair of sneakers that their parents let them splurge on what they wore to prom what was playing in the car. So I think it’s a really nice walk down memory lane, but it does go through the present. So for anyone who’s like wait a minute, I don’t know what you old heads are talking about. Yes, we talk about ASAP Rocky and Travis Scott, Kid Cudi, like all of the newer artists as well. But regardless of what era you came in, there’s going to be this really great walk down memory lane.

And let’s start with Dapper Dan, right, because you open the book with Dapper Dan, who was kind of this underground legend. And then, you know, runs into, shall we say, copyright issues from some of the luxury houses, right, like, luxury fashion houses did not take hip hop culture seriously. They were just like, Yeah, I mean, even Timberland didn’t take it seriously. Like, it was wild and away and even North Face every now and again. It’s still kind of like, and it’s really telling to me.

Oftentimes Hip Hop really is sort of coded. So this idea of we’re talking about racism, classism, things of that notion. So in the beginning, Dapper Dan, who’s known as the father of logomania, he had his atelier in Harlem, where he would create these custom outfits and creations for clients how? Taking the logos of the big houses. So imagine like Louis Vuitton, covered in the Louis Vuitton monogram. Louis Vuitton never made that particular outfit but Dapper Dan’s audience, whether it be athletes like Mike Tyson, whether it be a lot of street guys or drug dealers, that’s what they wanted. So he very much serve that audience. It’s funny because Dap says the beginning rappers couldn’t afford him. Now thinking back, it sounds obscene that hip hop artists couldn’t afford his clothing. But it could go into the 10s of 1000s of dollars. Rap wasn’t making money like that that commercial explosion only came well into the 90s. And of course, now, I mean, artists are signing eight figure deals with one record. I mean, it’s out of control. So what Dap was doing was something very kind of groundbreaking. He understood the idea of customization being very bespoke. So you could come into his store and say, I want a baggier fit, I want bigger pockets. I want bulletproof lining. It really is what you needed for your lifestyle and what you wanted to wear. And this idea of having a one on one was very important. You want to wear something off the rack that, you know, five other people at the party are going to be wearing. But Dapper Dan because he was taking these logos, all of the houses. Ultimately Fendi was like the final nail in the coffin. They kept writing him and shutting him down, shutting him down, and only many years later, and that’s how the book ends was he brought back into the fold. When Gucci ended up knocking off one of his designs. It caused a huge tizzy on social media and among certain fashion journalists. And they had to end up issuing a Mea Culpa. And ultimately, now they’re partners working together. But it’s a total full circle moment, someone who started as the Godfather, and only years later, after we go through this 50 year evolution has he gained a seat at the table, right? And

Then you’ve got Pharrell as the creative director now for Vuitton. Right? He followed Virgil Abloh. Yeah, yeah. So there’s this mix, right of streetwear. I mean, Virgil Abloh, obviously known for off white, creative genius. But Vuitton brings him in and says, Okay, now reinvent us, right. That’s essentially what they’re saying. Reinvent us. And streetwear in a lot of ways has become the new luxury. And I think there are some people who may with a deep understanding of fashion, look at it and kind of go really what, but streetwear really is like, it’s the future and it’s now at the same time, and it’s wild to see this evolution. And then Pharrell, right, like, okay, guy.

Yeah. And Pharrell is interesting because from day one, he just had this love of fashion. So this is the guy when he first came in as a producer, and later as an artist. He’s wearing the skinny jeans. And this is when everyone’s jeans are very big and very baggy. Yeah, the trucker hats on the fitted shirt, and later, pulling in things like for example, streetwear Japanese street wear his connection with NIGO, who’s now over at Kenzo. But it was this idea of launching his own line with Billionaire Boys Club, and then later working with people like Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs. So he very much wanted to be taken seriously in fashion. It didn’t surprise me when he took over after Virgil sadly passed away because he really is that perfect intersection of music, culture, our fashion. And he’s probably got the biggest Rolodex in the world, his debut. I mean, I would say it outshine every fashion week when it comes to celebrities. You have Rihanna, who’s modeling for him when she was pregnant at the time, Jay Z is jumping on the mic and doing the song with him. Who else had that kind of Rolodex? And I think they were just very smart and passing the torch to someone who knew Virgil, who loved him respected him. And they’re able to sort of continue being very much a cultural leader.

One of the things you think, or at least that I think of, in the context of hip hop two is the brand extensions that happen, right, like, let’s look at Jay Z for a second. He has a publishing imprint with one of the big four publishers, right? He’s got his fashion stuff, he’s got the music stuff. He’s been involved in basketball and also, like, he’s just building a world right Like, and he’s not the only one obviously. I mean, this has happened multiple times. But it’s really interesting to see these guys come out of the world and just be like, well, it’s not just the music.

Yeah. And I think so much of that going into their history. So a lot of people remember Jay Z’s line with Damon Dash was Rocawear. And Rocawear was very successful. Clearing with 300 million like first year, but that came out of necessity, because and I interviewed Damon and he tells this great story, where he went to a brand, a European brand at the time called Iceberg. And Jay loved the brand, he would wear it and shout it out records. And they just wanted to work with that, like Jay, who was already established at this point. And according to Dame, Iceberg was like, Absolutely not. And you can go to their samples sale. So basically, he felt disrespected. So Dame, because he’s from Harlem, and he has that very entrepreneurial ethos. Okay, I’m going to show you by starting my own line, and it’s going to be bigger than yours. And that idea that sort of DIY, DNA is very much in hip hop. And you start to see that with people, as you mentioned, Andre Harrell have later on even somebody like a Kanye, it’s this idea that if you don’t immediately lay out the red carpet, we’ll figure it out ourselves. And I do think for people who love hip hop, and even work in the industry, that very much resonates. It’s this idea that if doors are closing, when you go into the side window, or you go to the back, or you know what I’ll build my own house next to yours, it’s going to be bigger and look better than yours. So that’s very much a part of it. And I wanted to showcase the importance of where that entrepreneurial spirit comes from. A lot of it goes back to people growing up in New York City, in the 80s. We’re talking during the crack epidemic, Reaganomics. It’s a very bleak economic time. So to just survive in certain neighborhoods, we’ve got to figure it out, because it really is sort of eat or be eaten. So imagine coming into the music business with that idea. You’re not going in through an internship, you’re not getting academic credit, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re figuring it out, you’re an outsider, or you’re an underdog. And that same, I think, mentality has stayed with a lot of these guys as they continue to expand their empires, right.

And fashion is hugely aspirational, right, like the runway shows have always just been about, you know, okay, I’m gonna use Halston as an example, and I’m really dating myself for a second. But, you know, in the 70s, Halston had all of these licenses, and suddenly you could buy Halston sheets and glasses, and it was just, it was too much actually. And he really did damage kind of his brand, he went from being this very chic arbiter of taste to, Oh, that guy, anybody, everything and the value gets lost, right? And so the idea that fashion is so representational, especially in America, I’m gonna say in American culture in general, like, it really is like, I’m not a logos person, I’m really not. But that’s also its own statement that I don’t really want logos on my clothing. And that’s a whole different conversation for you. And I have some time. But we’re also talking about power. We’re talking about class, we’re talking about access. We’re talking about more than just the DIY, right? Like, it’s how do you build a thing? Because that’s the only way forward?

Right? Yeah, one of the things that was really important in the book, and I believe it’s chapter two is talking about the laws of luxury. So going back to sumptuary laws that were going to the ancient world, Europe, and then later into America, they were actual codes of what people could wear. So just imagine that so when you finally are able to, from an economic perspective, a historical perspective, where what for the longest time, you’ve been told, you can’t, because historically, people of color and those who weren’t royalty or weren’t wealthy, were basically considered lesser than you come to America. And finally, we’re getting into an era where maybe there isn’t a distinct class society, but it’s still there in other ways. And I think it makes sense that a person especially a young person, who gets the opportunity and the resources to wear something luxury, I think we all know what it feels like when you have on a new suit or a new outfit. You feel more confident. People treat you nicer, they opened the door, they’re smiling. It’s a part of psychology, social signaling, and it truly is, I would say the hand shooting before somebody opens their mouth is how they dress. As human beings, we do a quick scan, you look at their sneakers, you look at what they’re wearing. I like to say it’s that adage, dress for the job you want, not the job that you have. So even whether you’ve made it sometimes it’s the fake it till you make it mentality. You might not be a millionaire, you might not feel great about yourself or be successful. But you can at least put on a nice outfit and play the part until one day it does manifest. So that was important for me to lay that groundwork. Because I think so many times people do think hip hop is so materialistic. It’s just a reflection of American capitalism. But it’s so much deeper than that. Because at one-point clothes were there was a gatekeeper beyond just the economic standpoint. So for a young person to wear a huge logo, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, there’s so much that’s gotten into that decision from who they are to the history that came before them.

I mean, even Tupac, when he wore Versace to the Grammys, you write about this in the book, people were like, Wait, What’s he wearing? What? Like, they were just expecting something different. And he was like, no, actually, I would like to wear a very nice thing and also, um, Tupac Shakur, so I’m going to, if you look back to it like Motown, right, like, Quincy Jones made a very concerted effort with all of his artists saying, you have to look a certain way. Like there, this is non negotiable, you have to look a certain way. If you’re on this label, and are performing sort of under my auspices, right, and it does come back to respectability, right, and the way we talk about who’s allowed in the door, or what we’re looking to do, or what art looks like, right, you write about the women of hip hop in such a great groovy way. And I want to bring that in now, because for a long time, women were wearing, you know, baggy jeans and whatever they felt like, and it wasn’t about sort of, you know, tiny pieces of clothing, right? It was just like, I’m going to wear whatever I want. And that was a really exhilarating moment, for some of us to see where I was like, Oh, look over the cute girls are just kind of like, well, I am going to wear a giant basketball jersey over baggy jeans and Timberlands and it was, no one had seen anything like it.

Yeah. And when I talk about some of those early artists, for example, let’s say like an MC Light or even Queen Latifah. Oftentimes, that was a way for women to blend in with the guys, where it’s this idea of you don’t want your femininity or your sexuality to be what people focus on. And we see this even in other industries. I think about industries like banking, for example, where it’s predominantly men, and I remember in school when we would have to interview for those kinds of jobs, okay, don’t wear a bold lip. Don’t wear nail polish, it’s going to be too distracting, wear black or navy, it’s about as women we should blend in, they need to focus on our work and on our talent and not the fact that we’re attractive or that we’re different than they are. So in the beginning a lot of female artists because they truly were the minority. I mean, they still are, unfortunately, but even more so. I think they just want to be taken seriously as rappers. And you couldn’t if you were pretty or sexy or considered somebody who’s utilizing your femininity to gain fans or gain popularity. Later that did change. You saw the evolution of someone like a Salt N Pepa, what they look like when they first came out. And then later in sort of like that, what a man era where they’re like, No, we’re beautiful, and we’re embracing our appearance and our bodies. And that’s going to make it into our music. Of course Lil Kim, Foxy Brown are huge examples of that. And really the ancestors of the Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion. I mean, the list goes on and on with women and hip hop today. But I think women have constantly had to navigate. How do you garner respect in a male dominated art form? How do you stay true to yourself? Because again, you’re oftentimes a young girl, a young woman, and being sexy and beautiful and pretty might be a part of your personality. But how do you balance that with still being taken seriously? So I think with the evolution of women, it’s always very fascinating. And for me, it was important to focus on the artists but also the designers people like in April Walker, Kimora Lee Simmons, people behind the scenes like fashion editors, because within this sort of hip hop historical space, to this day, most of the stories are told by men, they’re told through the lens for men and it was very important for me to have records integration, whether we’re talking about gender, race, geographic location, this isn’t simply a New York story. There’s LA, there’s down south, there’s Europe, there’s Japan, it was very important for me to tell a holistic story. And I think a lot of that just comes from me as someone who grew up outside of New York and having that very sort of 30,000 feet above everything perspective.

Did anything surprise you, when you were writing Fashion Killa?

I think what surprised me the most was just how much there was to write about. When you’re writing a nonfiction book, part of the proposal is you lay out the book, this is sort of what the blueprint will be what every chapter will be. And to some extent, I did adhere to that. But what’s fascinating is, you may have one conversation with someone, they just mentioned a name offhand. All right, let me look that person up, that opens up a whole new chapter. And you think 80,000 words is a lot of words, but I promise you, when you have something as robust as this topic, you’re gonna hit that word count. And there was some things that just ended up on the cutting room floor. I just couldn’t fit it in. It didn’t feel organic in the timeline. So just the amount of content amount of information. So many moments that I wanted to include, that was probably the most surprising. I think, like a lot of people, I thought that I knew most of the story, but I learned a lot writing it. And whether it be diving to something like The Lowlifes, who used to be this group in New York, would essentially steal Ralph Lauren. That’s what they did. They were a boosting crew, or going in deeper into sort of the hustler culture, things like the Supreme Team, which were very notorious drug dealers and queens who basically dress like they were in the pages of GQ. And someone like a young LL Cool J is at their parties, admiring them. So there were so many sorts of these different kinds of rabbit holes. I ended up going down, but I hadn’t planned. But I think that’s what also makes it fun.

How long did it take you to write the book?

So from proposal to bookshelves at Barnes and Noble almost three years? Okay, so this was my pandemic project. Yeah, I this was like me making the decision, I’m going to do something positive. Otherwise, I was watching a lot of the office and ordering chicken wings very late night in New York. So shout out to the 24 hour diner across the street. And I decided I really wanted for my first book, I wanted to tell an important story, a story that hadn’t been told before. And for me as good as a woman, a woman of color in this industry, having that rare vantage point, I really wanted to put like a stake in the ground. Because as you know, the publishing world is still very homogenous. There is a lot of gatekeeping. And for me, I hope with this book, other young people, especially women, women of color, are also inspired to want to be in this space, because we need you and we need a diversity of voices across the gamut. So for me, it was this, this idea of doing something with historical importance. I knew I wanted to come out during Hip Hop 50. But it’s an anthology. So it really sort of lives forever.

You know, I have to say, I don’t actually read a lot of music books. And you know, I’m a bookseller saying, Well, I don’t actually read a lot of music books, but I don’t, the thing that I loved about Fashion Killa was just that it sits more in this like pop culture, space. But I do like there’s so much music history. And I’m not kidding. When I was going through every single chapter, I was really listening to stuff that I hadn’t necessarily listened to in a minute. Because I just felt like the book had a soundtrack. And I’m pretty sure that was intentional because you do come out of music journalism. But can we talk about where this sort of fits in that landscape of music, journalism and music books?

It was very important for me that this book is pop culture. So of course, it’s hip hop. It’s music, it’s fashion. But I wanted someone who is a total neophyte, complete outsider to be able to pick it up. It’s very readable. It’s a fast read. These books are not a fast read. I didn’t want it to read sort of as like a dense text within the hip hop space. Right now, as in a lot of nonfiction. Very much the focus is on memoirs. There’s coffee table book, but not a lot of anthologies. So it was important to me, coming from hip hop journalism, and as somebody who just loves the culture, these stories have to be codified and put into writing. Because otherwise, they disappear. Magazines no longer exist. It’s harder to ascertain archives. Yeah, I mean, nowadays, what is it music video, like the snippet that you watch on Tik Tok, or maybe you’re scrolling through YouTube. So much of history and culture. I don’t want it to disappear. And I think for it to be documented the right way. It has to be people who come from the culture who love it, who respect it. So that was really important to me as well, that within the space of mostly male rapper, memoirs, shout out to the guys, I’m kind of competing with them right now the chart, but I wanted my book to stand out. And even from the cover, the very eye-catching cover, I went into the publisher with a whole mood board. I mean, I’m sure they were, they were tired of me with all of my different ideas. But I very much knew what this book should look like. Even the way the cover feels, it was important for it to feel Luxe, and special and different. Because in many ways, I’m like a nontraditional hip hop journalist. I’m somebody who comes, you know, from a very sort of Cosmopolitan background. So this book had to also feel different and had to feel special. So I tell people, whether you read one page or a whole book, just having the book on your coffee table looks good, looks really good on your bookshelf. And that was very intentional from the color scheme. And again, that was just something that I wanted this, especially as we’re getting as a holiday. It’s something that I want people to really treasure and be able to gift and enjoy. Again, whether you’re a hip hop fan or not, I think there truly is something in it for everybody.

So you mentioned at the top of the show that you have a degree from the business school at Michigan, let’s face it, you’re not really taught to write in business school? Yes, you’re taught to write business plans, that’s a different thing you’ve written long form narrative nonfiction, it’s a totally different thing. So how did we get here?

It’s interesting, because as a kid, I loved English. So I love to read, my mom would take me to the library, we’d have like the Scholastic Book Club, like those were just parts of my childhood. And my dad always wanted to be a poet, interestingly enough, but instead he got a PhD in physics, as a lot of immigrants, you know, we have to do. And I just grew up in an era that writing wasn’t really a career. So maybe, you know, my dream was to take a lot of English classes and great books and Western literature. But I knew that I wanted to move to New York. I’m from a small town, and I have industry connections. So I sort of had to plan out, okay, what’s going to get me to New York, while going to business school, that’s going to be a degree, that’s always going to help me. And in retrospect, I really do think it was a good degree for me, because our school, it was a lot about public speaking, presenting yourself, of course, we don’t think about it at the time. But as a writer, you truly are the CEO of your own brand. I don’t know if every other writer thinks that way. But I absolutely do on any day on a publicist, I’m a manager, I’m an agent. And I have a team, of course to help me. But I still have to be the one like I’m the face of the company. And this company rests on me. For the writing part. Starting back in high school, I wrote for our local paper, the Kalamazoo Gazette. And then later, I wrote for my college paper, the Michigan daily. And again, writing was just fun to me. Once I moved to New York, I was working in the industry, a lot of my friends were writers. And in the beginning, I just started freelancing, so I could get free concert tickets, hang out, you know, they all got to go to the show for free. So why not? If I have to review the show, I can do that. But it was so interesting. There was a time from like, 10 to six, I was working my day job. And then from about seven to like, three, I would go to a show, I would review the show, turn into 1000 words, go to sleep, and then do it all again the next day. And some of my early bylines were like New York Magazine, Village Voice. And a lot of that was from me, just relentlessly pitching. And I think that comes from someone who, you know, went to business school, and also comes up through Hip Hop where we really don’t take no for an answer respectfully, of course, but we just don’t and if someone’s like, you know, we sent a press release out and we didn’t get a hit. You text them. I know their cousin, right? I’m gonna call her cousin. Well I used to date their, you know, ex dog walker, I’m gonna call him like, we just all the synapses fire. And that’s just how we are. So I think coming from that business background, it served me I probably am not as well read as a lot of the authors on here. You know, I can sort of kind of quote Shakespeare but not really kind of ends with Hamlet and Lear. But my mindset is built to sort of be successful as a writer and I view writing as a business and not just sort of like a fun pastime because at the end of the day, I live in New York and it You want to live in the city, you don’t have financial health, you don’t come from money, you got to figure it out. And you have to treat your craft, of course, the writing needs to be on point, the writing has to be good. But you have to view your career truly as a business. I think in order to be a professional author and as a career writer, okay,

I’m gonna throw in a bridge too, which is story builds everything, right? Story builds connections, story builds our businesses, story builds, everything we do, it builds community, like we don’t actually function without story. So, if you are one of these folks who’s just like, well, I don’t really read, and I know you exist. I know there are people out in the world, they told me to my face. Ooh, that’s kind of bold. It is it is. It’s kind of fascinating. But you know, more importantly, story is the thing that builds everything we do. Right? Like it’s not just lyrics in a story is how you build a company. Yeah, I have to say you’ve done a very cool thing with Fashion Killa I’m really glad we had a chance to hang out and talk about this book. Because as you could tell, there’s a lot more happening here than just connecting fashion. And music. We’re talking about lots of, well, big ideas, right? Not that passionate music aren’t big ideas, but y’all know what I’m talking about. So, Sowmya, thank you so much for joining us on part of it. This was really fun. Can we do it again?

Absolutely. Well, you know, I can’t tell you too much. But we just locked in that second book deal.

Okay, that makes me very happy.

But that’s a business school idea, right? We’re still working on the first book, but we got to be on to the next one.

Now that’s actually a writer thing to actually, it’s a really, really good piece of advice. If you’ve finished your first book and handed it off, and it’s in the publication process. It’s a really, really good idea to start the next one, whatever number book that is, it’ll just help you get through the whole publication process. So anyway, thanks again. This was awesome.

Absolutely. So Fashion Killa is available at all your Barnes and Noble, Barnes and noble.com. I come from the music business. We have to plug everything I know and for everybody who buys it, definitely send me photos. I’m getting amazing like selfies, people matching it with their outfits showing me on their coffee table. So @Sowmya K on all social media, and this was amazing. I really appreciate it.