One bulletin post on MySpace this morning sent me into an explosion of emailing and yelling at friends for their opinions (I am counting on your input, Heron). This is something I don’t know a lot about and really want to hear other people’s views on. When Arthur asked, I said “San Francisco, the UK, hip hop bleeding into other music genres’ fashion, sort of.”

So here goes. The bulletin was from Calvin Harris (one of my favorites from the UK of the neon electro variety), promoting this righteous song by Mitchell Brothers:

Isn’t that contagious? Anyway, an electronic artist promoting the hell out of a mostly hip hop song (he produced it). This is not dissimilar to the merging of hip hop and rock that I quoted in the Hadouken! entry, except this time it’s less garage and more sparkle.

It made me think of when I visited San Francisco six months ago. My friend Jay was commenting on the culture there and how hip hop seems to have seeped into every other genre. Indie and skater kids wearing Dunks, shopping at Upper Playground, etc. I wonder if there is a parallel of sorts between this merging in San Francisco and what I was seeing come from the UK. I really want to understand this whole thing better. Maybe I’m imagining all of it. I e-mailed my friend Jess, who lives in San Francisco and is very up on things.

She responded with this.

i’d imagine that the hip hop influence on the fashion of other subcultures of the SF-microcosm (and LA, too!) is artsiness begetting (or beshoeing/behoodieing) more artsiness. i think in the indie rock circles, dressing with undertones of hip hop flare is done with a tad bit of irony in most cases. with companies like UP, i think the design aspect and creativity speak to these subcultures that value the aesthetic.

and maybe colors. hipsters/skaters/indie rock scenesters like getting away with wearing garish colors and loud prints.

…i think you might have something, comparing SF and the UK. another interesting comparison might be LA and SF and their interpretations of the same three-way clash between hip-hop, hipster, and indie rock fashion scene. down in LA, i’ve seen rappers dressed like old school weezer, and hipsters wearing dunks and XXXL hoodies. go figure.

Now, L.A. I really know nothing about. I browsed around The Cobra Snake a bit (he’s a West Coast nightlife photographer) and found tons of stuff like this, which seems to confirm it all:

So what do you think? I would love to hear from people from San Francisco, L.A., the UK or anywhere else who could shed some more light on things. All of this reminds me of this entry Noah wrote in September about music lines blurring.

[photos from The Cobra Snake & Uffie]