The Tanning of America

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

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Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First printing, September 2011

 

Copyright © 2011 by Steve Stoute

 

All rights reserved

 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Stoute, Steve, 1970–

The tanning of America : how hip-hop created a culture that rewrote the rules of the new economy / Steve Stoute with Mim Eichler Rivas. p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-52911-9

1. Marketing—United States. 2. Hip-hop—United States. 3. Consumers—United States. 4. Rap (Music) 5. Hip-hop—Economic aspects. 6. Hip-hop—Social aspects. I. Rivas, Mim Eichler. II. Title.

HF5415.1.S76 2011

306.1—dc22

2011004316

 

 

Set in Cheltenham Book

 

 

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While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

TO MY DAUGHTER SOPHIA . . .

May you grow up in a world without divisions that are based on color or ethnicity, a place where aspirations become shared realities.

adj
\ˈər-bən\

 

 

 

Prior to the 2000 census, the term
urban
referred to all territory, population, and housing units located in places with a population of 2,500 or more. After the 2000 census, the definition changed to incorporate a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile.

However, in marketing speak and with everyday dialogue, the word
urban
has come to refer to inner city youths and is loosely associated with minorities.

As we use
urban
in this book, our aim is to speak to density and not to make reference to race or creed.

Graydon Carter

 

 

 

 

 

I
t could be fair to say that Steve Stoute is one of the more noticeable figures in the recent flurry of Madison Avenue ad talismans. That's partly because he is African-American. But it's also because he still has the unfazed complexion of a baby—a baby with a mustache, mind you. He doesn't look much older than he did when I first met him almost twenty years ago. Back then, Peter Arnell, who was on his way to becoming a certifiable ad legend, used to frequent the same Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village that I did. Peter was a big fellow in those days and he would often share a table with a lot of main courses and a good-looking young kid named Steve. Steve had the sort of winning way that indicated he might be going places, and I just assumed he was Peter's assistant. A few years later, I was surprised to discover that not only was Steve not Peter's assistant, he was
his partner
. Not only that: They had just sold their marketing company for a good many millions of dollars.

In a way, if you were there, you could see it all happening in front of you. Steve was like a sponge. He wanted to know about everything and everyone. He trimmed down, got a great tailor, and even figured out how to show up for lunch on time. Beyond that, he had the passion, the curiosity, and a willingness to try anything that all successful people have. And he had enough moxie to fuel the long journey from Queens across the East River to Manhattan. For the son of hardworking immigrants from Trinidad, that is about as tough and as far a distance as you're ever going to travel in this country.

Steve founded Translation Consulting & Brand Imaging in 2004. I'm never quite sure what branding people do exactly, but I know that Steve is broadly admired for his lucrative pairings of the well known and the well made. He's fashioned himself into the host of a kind of commercial cocktail party where some of the world's biggest stars and some of the world's biggest companies couple up at just the right moment. And in advertising, as with show business or the hospitality industry, timing is everything. Steve is the architect behind Gwen Stefani and Hewlett-Packard, Justin Timberlake and McDonald's, Jay-Z and Reebok, Lady Gaga and MAC Cosmetics. The list goes on.

The Tanning of America
chronicles the economics, politics, and poetry of hip-hop culture and how it propelled the rise of brands as diverse as Tommy Hilfiger, Cristal champagne, Versace, Timberland, Nordica, and Woolrich. Insofar as I have come to understand him over the years—both as a friend and as someone I just generally admire—Steve's success comes from being a master observer. He has the great adman's ability to pick up on imperceptible ripples in the culture—ripples that will in time become waves. And then he just gets on top of them and rides the big ones to glory.

O
ur story begins on a sweltering summer night in New York City—Friday, July 19, 1986, to be exact—during a sold-out show at the legendary Madison Square Garden, which some twenty thousand exuberant fans, mostly in their teens and early twenties, mainly African-American and Hispanic, had traveled from near and far to attend. For most observers of popular culture at the time, little significance would be attributed to the events of the evening, despite its being one of the first rap concerts to command the Garden. But for those fortunate enough to have been there—and those like me, then a sixteen-year-old growing up in Queens, already obsessed with hip-hop yet sadly unable to score a ticket—this night was about to take on biblical relevance in our generation's cultural DNA.

Across the five boroughs and beyond, the streets had been humming with anticipation for weeks. The Garden's promoters, however, along with the rest of the mainstream media, were apparently so disinterested in whatever this ghetto-born musical oddity was, the only advance published mention of the show appeared the day before in
The New York Times
. In a brief attempt to characterize the concert's lineup of Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and newcomer Whodini, the
Times
asserted:

Even if the writing seems quaint by most standards, the
Times
got one thing right: The threesome—Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell—were already considered titans of the small but expanding kingdom of rap. After first appearing on the scene in the spring of 1983, the trio from Hollis, Queens—not far from my neighborhood of Queens Village—had been blazing trails across urban America, gathering momentum. Three years later, Run-DMC were on their way to becoming the first true superstars of hip-hop. In terms of record sales, they were riding a meaningful wave with
Raising Hell,
their aptly named third album, released earlier that year. Dropping hit singles one after the other, the album would go on to be certified multiplatinum and, in time, would be critically hailed as a genre-defining masterpiece.