How hip-hop went from being shunned by big business to multimillion-dollar collabs

abcnews.go.com:

The signs of hip-hop’s influence are now 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 the Rocawear line start...

NEW YORK — 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 goes beyond the music,” said C. Keith Harrison, a professor and founding director for the University of Central Florida’s Business of Hip-Hop Innovation & Creative Industries certificate program. “Hip-hop always knew, as Nipsey Hussle would say, how to get it out of the trunk, and so they’ve always had to have innovative business models.”

That spirit of innovation has helped push hip-hop past big business' initial resistance to align with the genre to become the most popular music form in the United States since 2017. Hip-hop's impact on the $16 billion music industry and beyond is now so widespread, experts say it becomes difficult to quantify.

Author Zack O'Malley Greenberg estimates that hip-hop's five wealthiest artists