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Tupac and the Kids: Fashion of the Freshman Class, Brand U of Obsolete
Nicholas Rickards, Ph.D. Candidate
Faculty of Education, Brock University
University Lecturer & Public School Teacher
Contemporary young adult fashion reflects a schizophrenic attempt to define an aesthetic for a generation hooked on the opioid of the 20-second reel. Born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s, Generation Z (hereafter, Z’ers) are flipping through the crates of nostalgia to spin a cultural identity for a generation coming of age in an uncertain world. It’s not cute, but it’s working; the XL tees or spaghetti straps, with baggy jeans, pajama bottoms, or sweats, embellished with Crocs, Nike Blazers, or UGGs Women’s Tazz Platform Slippers (you’ll know when you see them) is familiar and fresh. Never mind that basketball teams are hooping in shorts with six-inch inseams, just high enough to make any millennial cringe.
What piqued my interest in this nouveau style, and what I think is worth exploring, is that standard amongst their frenzied wardrobe are two staple items: the 90s hip-hop t-shirt and the NCAA university pullover hoodie.
Referred to as “Boathouse hoodies” in hallways, but marketed as the “Boathouse Varsity Collection” from the Canadian retailer Boathouse, the hoodies are exactly what you would expect to find in a brand-savvy university bookstore; matching school colours, big embroidered letters, high-quality cotton-polyester blend, and ironic price tags that have no place in any student budget. Every hoodie in the Varsity Collection is American. Ostensibly, Canadian kids don’t think Canadian universities are cool. Ominously, very few of them can even name one. Trump would be proud.
Underneath their hoodies, however, are shirts with album covers, movie posters, and portraits of prominent figures from the 90’s hip-hop scene. It’s not uncommon to come across a cool pose of The Notorious B.I.G; Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube in the theatrical poster for John Singleton’s coming-of-age drama Boyz ‘N The Hood (1991); misty profiles of the late R&B singer Aaliyah; and dozens of portraits of late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur.
Most of the hip-hop graphic tees come from Hot Topic (I know this because I have one — Wu-Tang!). Yet, when I engage the Z’ers dripping in swag, I always seem to collide with the same empty words or blank eyes of embarrassment.
“Whoa, cool shirt! You know who that is!?” I’ll say, probably a little too excited.
“Yeah,” they’ll respond, as if offended.
I usually quiz them here because I approach them with sincerity but am set-off by the flippant attitude. “Really? Name five tracks.”
““California Love” . . . “Hit ’Em Up” . . .” They usually flatline at two. This is when the embarrassment kicks in. “I can’t think of any right now, Ok! I listen to him all the time!”
For the most part, these quips are fun. Sometimes, though, I have an encounter that I can’t bear to appeal.
I come from a single mom. We were poor and spent a lot of time rewatching movies on VHS. Because my mother was and remains a very aware white woman who raised a son with a nappy afro and chocolate-brown skin, she knew I’d have a different life experience from hers and ensured that I was prepared for it, to the best of her abilities. Keep in mind that she didn’t go to university, but she did attend the School of Hard Knocks.
When I was a kid, sometimes a double feature on a Saturday was Boyz N The Hood in the morning and The Lion King in the afternoon. She allowed the double feature because the father figure in Boyz N The Hood, Jason “Furious” Styles (Laurence Fishbourne), rivaled Mufasa (James Earl Jones) in The Lion King as an exemplar of upstanding masculinity for her son — have a look (Movieclips, 2012). She was alright with her kid watching both films because the sermons from “Furious” Styles in Boyz N The Hood was worth the on-screen gun violence, and even though its racial politics are incredibly problematic, The Lion King was just too dope.
So, when I encounter a Z’er, point at their shirt exclaiming “Oh, Boyz N The Hood?!” and the response I get is “Yeah, they’re a great band,” I find that I don’t have the heart to engage.
When Z’ers and I exchange repartee about the NCAA hoodies and hip-hop shirts, we’re doing more than staking a claim of generational ownership.
After all, the meaning of what a modern university is, what it represents, what it confers, who can access it, and the promise it holds are important questions to ask for young people facing rising tuitions, crippling debt, and stagnant wages that will pay less for jobs upon entry than what was promised upon pursuit (Romard, 2023). For a variety of reasons, the notion that universities are the future for young people in society is becoming “increasingly hard to sell” (Wells, 2024, para. 12) in part because universities, like Z’ers, face “a state of confusion, or conflicting expectations, for what an organization should do or be” (Thompson, 2024, para. 10).
It makes sense that the floating signifier of the baby-blue UCLA hoodie might veil a portrait of Tupac on a shirt, obscuring the symbol and defanging the politics. Though I can’t tell if it’s tragic or comedic, it’s ironic that attacks on critical race theory in education coincide with kids in schools wearing shirts of the man who wrote “Changes” and “I Don’t Give a Fuck” under branded hoodies for universities that they couldn’t locate on a map. By a sad coincidence of the unthoughtful appropriation of Tupac, it comes as no surprise that Drake became the rap superstar of their generation (Rosalsky, 2024). Lucky them. Diddy was one of ours.
Tupac’s late mother, Afeni Shakur, was a former member of the Black Panther Party. She spent decades fighting legal battles to protect the reverence and integrity of her son’s estate (Tardio, 2013). I wonder what she would say about the Z’er’s chic fits, their relationship with her son, and their understanding of the tuition-free education he left for them to inherit.
Joseph Wright is an educator, photographer, and videographer who has worked on various projects in public education and with NGOs in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Thailand, Israel, and Palestine. You can find more of his work on his Instagram @brilliantthing.
References
Movieclips. (2012, October 7). Boyz n the hood (3/8) movie clip — gentrification (1991) hd. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p9rqqJmDaQ
Romard, R. (2023). Student debt is out of control in Canada. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/student-debt-is-out-of-control-in-canada/
Rosalsky, G. (2024). It was a classic rap beef. Then Drake revived Tupac with AI and Congress got involved. npr. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/05/14/1250578295/it-was-a-classic-rap-beef-then-drake-revived-tupac-with-ai-and-congress-got-invo
Thompson, D. (2024). No one knows what universities are for. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/bureaucratic-bloat-eating-american-universities-inside/678324/
Wells. P. (2024). The growing estrangement between universities and society. University Affairs. https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/test-view-from-here/#:~:text=The%20bad%20news%20for%20university,to%20curtail%20that%20option%20too.
