Frontin’: The Story of the Most Influential Music Video in Menswear History

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In just above four minutes, the video clip for “Frontin,’” Pharrell’s 2003 single, excursions us by a home get together in Miami. Lenny Kravitz mingles with Japanese streetwear designer Nigo. Lanisha Cole utters the key phrase—“Neptunes Presents the Clones”—to enter the get together, and right away catches Pharrell’s eye. Jay-Z, in a banana-yellow shirt, appears momentarily, primarily by means of the lens of a digital camera. Always lingering in the background is a halfpipe, welcoming skaters and crimson Solo cups in equivalent measure. For a particular sort of young gentleman, it was innovative.

Rhude designer Rhuigi Villaseñor was one of those men. He was almost 10 at the time, and remembers immediately grabbing onto each individual reference in the clip. “It was a preview of [Pharrell’s brand] Billionaire Boys Club], and I remember I was like, ‘What is that T-shirt? I will need that, I want the Icecreams,’” Villaseñor claims. A thing humorous took place just after that, he suggests. Rappers retained commencing fashion traces. Nigo began collaborating greatly stateside. Skateboarding exploded in relevance. The eyesight of a hip hop-pushed, streetwear-inflected life style introduced by “Frontin’” in 2003 was essentially the blueprint for almost everything that turned great in the 18 a long time because.

“‘Frontin’,” Villaseñor declares, “is likely the most crucial audio video clip for our lifestyle.”

Immediately after viewing the video clip Villaseñor remembers thinking, “We want a T-shirt organization, we want a manufacturer, we want to skate, and we want to dangle with Nigo.” Courtesy of Arista and Star Trak

The video’s firsts were being several. “Frontin’” introduced the entire world to Pharrell’s BBC brand name, and helped place Lauren London and Cole on the map. It was 1 of the initial situations Hov talked publicly about his romantic relationship with Beyoncé, and created it cool to place a Japanese streetwear designer on the bash guest checklist. The way Villaseñor tells it, Pharrell’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak perpetual calendar was formative in the enjoy planet, too. “Back then, we’re residing by way of it. You really don’t know,” says Jimmy Gorecki, a previous member of Pharrell’s Icecream skate staff and now the founder of the brand JSP, tells me. “20 a long time afterwards it is like, ‘Wow, they failed to have to put on Orchard Avenue, they didn’t have to place in a mini ramp,’ But for the reason that they did we are seeking back again back on how essential those moments ended up now.”