Happenings The American Museum Of Natural History Opens Ice Cold: An Exhibition Of Hip-Hop Jewelry And Watches

Tobak included five watches in the show. "I knew all the iconic pieces that I wanted," she said, "and then it was just a matter of do they still exist? Are they still in the hands of the original owner, or who has them if not and then are they reachable?" 

First in the lineup is of course The Five Time Zone, launched in 2002 by Jacob Arabo, the famous 47th Street entrepreneur known as Jacob the Jeweler, a nickname that had been given to him by Biggie Smalls.

"The Five Time Zone came along at a very specific time in hip-hop history and music culture," said Tobak. "That watch couldn't happen again now. It was a perfect storm of the music business getting money, stepping into its power, becoming interested in the luxury world, coupled with the luxury world not loving hip-hop." The Five Time Zone is often snubbed by the watch community but its early affiliation with celebrity demonstrated the crossover potential of luxury watches into a broader cultural landscape. It carved a space for the way watches now infiltrate mainstream culture through the medium of celebrity as well as rap lyrics.

A slightly different category of watch, but with just as much cultural significance, the Jay-Z 10th Anniversary Limited Edition Offshore was also selected by Tobak. Through a historical lens, Jay-Z's Offshore was one of the most important watches of 21st-century watch design. Sure, at the time, the Jay-Z 10th anniversary edition Offshore was a popular release, along with countless other Offshore LEs that intersected with Hollywood and sports. But Jay-Z's watch eventually came to stand as the ultimate convergence of a legacy brand in high-end watchmaking and one of the greatest rappers of all time. Perhaps we place more weight on the watch today, in part because of Jay-Z's mammoth success and in part due to where the narrative between hip-hop and watch collecting has landed. Tobak agrees hindsight is 20-20.

"When Jay-Z did his offshore, it wasn't breaking news the way it would be now," she said. "I think it was just much smaller. It's indicative of the artists who were starting to be really cognizant of the business side of things. The watch was made to commemorate 10 years in the music business for Jay-Z, not 10 years of Roc-A-Fella. That was hugely significant."

The exhibit also includes a "plain Jane" Day-Date from A$AP Ferg's personal collection which, to Tobak, signifies an evolution in the approach to watch collecting in the hip-hop community. "I see all the Jacob stuff and the nineties Rolex like bust downs as sort of a separate approach," she explains. "That obviously evolved to Jay-Z talking about complicated Pateks and Audemars Piguets. Of course, people are obviously still, you know, putting gems on their watches, but I think it's all a more nuanced approach now." Of course adornment obviously changes as time goes by, that doesn't mean one disqualifies the other.

"Maybe it's the last place people would expect to see an exhibit like this, but it made so much sense to me," Tobak explained to me earlier this month. "If you consider the scholarship and preservation and history around gems and minerals at the museum, you realize that it's an important context to place the pieces in. Especially given how they are sometimes intellectually thought about." To put it bluntly, hip-hop and its regalia is never usually placed alongside what is considered "mainstream" in the cultural narrative. But perhaps this is a real example of counterculture becoming mainstream culture. After all, today in 2024, hip-hop is America's largest cultural export.

Watches in hip-hop remain their own subculture within a now very mainstream culture. "[But] watches weren't traditionally talked about in the same way as certain iconic pieces like the QB pendant or the Run DMC Adidas rope chain," said Tobak. The landscape today is immeasurably different to the '90s and early '00s. 

"Hip-hop is having its quiet luxury moment," said Tobak. "Watches also extend to and embody a more grown aesthetic. It's for people who are maybe a little bit more advanced in the hip-hop world."

If we consider Pharell's new online auction platform Joopiter, collaborations like Cactus Jack x Audemars Piguet and the general rise of watch consumption among the mainstream, the exhibition feels rather timely. Hip-hop jewelry and watches are not traditionally studied or even considered as pieces of craft. Rarely given the same kind of backstory as other types of jewelry, this prestigious location almost forces us to have that conversation.

"The thing that I've always loved about hip-hop is that it didn't need outside validation," said Tobak. "Rappers used jewelry as both a communication tool and identity tool." Hip-hop has come to signify one aesthetic to many, but in reality it includes a plurality of artists and tastes and eras and approaches to collecting both jewelry and watches.

Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry will be open though January 2025.