Hip-hop has always revolved around money. Whether you had it, wanted it, or were on a mission to take it from someone, from the very beginning, money has been one of the most common subjects of the genre. Never was this more apparent than in its shiny suit era.
There’s no official start date for the shiny suit era, but most sources agree that it was sparked after the deaths of 2Pac (13 September 1996) and The Notorious B.I.G. (9 March 1997). The deaths of two of hip-hop’s most recognisable gangstas seemed to spark a change in the mindsets of the artists making popular music in the genre.
It was no longer about guns, robberies, and lyrical skill – it was about flexing stacks of money, jewellery, cars, and beautiful women. The luxurious lifestyle of the mafioso rap genre remained, while its hardcore edge died off. An early example of this is Nas‘ ‘Street Dreams (Remix)’ featuring R. Kelly: pop-adjacent with a smooth R&B hook, and high-class lyricism that provides a solid precursor of where the era’s sound was heading.
The man behind the movement was P. Diddy, known at the time as Puff Daddy, and his label Bad Boy Records. After Biggie’s death, he became the biggest player in the East Coast, with his July 1997 album, No Way Out, debuting at the top of the Billboard 200, selling over seven million copies and featuring smash singles such as ‘Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down’ and ‘It’s All About the Benjamins’. The songs featured heavy sampling, braggadocious lyrics about wealth and partying, R&B/hip-hop soul hooks, and music videos that would come to define the era’s name with shiny suit fashion.
Shiny suit videos usually had three things in common – direction by Hype Williams, often using his trademark fisheye lens, colourful shiny suits designed by costume designer June Ambrose, and brightly lit outdoor backdrops. These would usually be filmed on the West Coast in locations like Las Vegas or Hollywood – ironic for a movement that started in the east. A prototype for the style was defined in the 1996 video for ‘Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check’ by Busta Rhymes, and by the time the video for B.I.G.’s ‘Mo Money Mo Problems’ was released in July 1997, the style had been perfected.
Diddy’s sidekick, Ma$e, would continue the movement with his October 1997 release, Harlem World, which is perhaps the era’s most defining album. ‘Feel So Good’, the lead single, featured a sample of ‘Hollywood Swinging’ by Kool and the Gang and a breathy R&B hook by Kelly Price that interpolated Miami Sound Machine‘s ‘Bad Boy’. As Ma$e put it in the song, the mission was to “take hits from the eighties, and make it sound so crazy”.
Elsewhere on the East Coast, rapper-turned-actor Will Smith would release his November 1997 album, Big Willie Style. All pretence of gangsta rap was abandoned here, with an aggressively poppy sound that predictably performed extremely well on the charts. Single ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’ would give the movement an alternate name – the jiggy era.
In the same month that Big Willie Style came out, Jay-Z released his album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. While this was much more gangsta-focused than the albums previously mentioned, there are some noticeable examples of shiny suit era rap in the tracks ‘I Know What Girls Like’ and ‘Sunshine’. The latter, with its flashy electro sample beat and colourful fever-dream of a video, presented a rapper entirely out of his comfort zone trying to chase a mainstream cash grab, and it’s no surprise that, when Jay-Z ranked his own projects, he wrote that the song “kills this album”.
The next year, Southern rapper Jermaine Dupri would release ‘Money Ain’t a Thang’, featuring Jay-Z (which also appeared on Jay’s September 1998 album Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life). While it lacked an R&B hook, the lyrical content firmly places it in shiny suit territory, it would lead to a brief appearance of the movement in the south, with artists such as Timbaland & Magoo and Dupri himself releasing singles with aggressive lyricism and bouncy beats.
This would evolve into the bling era, led by Cash Money Records and most clearly seen in Juvenile’s October 1998 single ‘Ha’; and the 1999 single ‘Bling Bling’ by B.G. featuring Lil Wayne and the Hot Boys.
The LOX, comprised of Jadakiss, Styles P, and Sheek Louch, were another important part of the shiny suit era story, though not always willingly. The Yonkers trio signed to Bad Boy in 1996 and appeared on several of the label’s biggest hits, including ‘It’s All About the Benjamins’ and ‘Money, Power & Respect’. The latter would also become the title of their debut album in 1998, which went platinum and produced successful singles, but critics were quick to note the clash between the group’s raw lyricism and the glossy, pop-friendly sound imposed by Diddy. This created tension with the label.
The group were respected in New York’s mixtape and battle scenes for their raw bars, but fans and the LOX themselves felt the shiny suit image diluted their authenticity. By 1999, the LOX launched a Free the LOX campaign to escape their Bad Boy contract, eventually moving to Ruff Ryders where their image aligned much more with the hardcore sound.
Despite attempts to keep the sound going, such as Diddy’s Forever and Will Smith’s Willennium, the shiny suit era died off as hip-hop went into the 2000s. A large part of this was due to the demise of Bad Boy Records. Ma$e quit rap to pursue religion, and new signing Shyne was a weak Notorious B.I.G. rip-off that never really made a significant chart wave. Hardcore rapper Black Rob was the only label member to have success in the new millennium, with his album Life Story going platinum and lead single ‘Whoa!’ reaching the top ten in the rap charts.
The signs were clear: nobody wanted to be associated with the shiny suit era anymore, on the label that made it so popular.
While the shiny suit era was unimaginably successful and firmly planted hip hop in the mainstream (where it remains to this day), it was heavily panned, not just by critics but by fellow rappers. Tracks like Def Squad‘s ‘Can U Dig It’” (“I’m too underground to dance with that shiny shit on”) and De La Soul’s ‘Oooh’ (“shiny suit rappers and flossin’ MCs who fail at takin’ it to rhyme degrees”) directly mocked the movement.
It’s no coincidence that the golden age of hip-hop is considered to have ended at this time and gave way to the neutered silver age. The rise of artists such as DMX, 50 Cent and Eminem proved that gangsta and hardcore rap still had a place in the mainstream, but the shiny suit era ultimately served as the bridge that made hip hop palatable to a wider audience, even if it came at the cost of authenticity in the eyes of many fans.
