Speak ya clout is a series of heart to heart conversations, exclusively found at BSTN Chronicles. From insiders of the fashion business to blazers of new trails and creative forces from other industries, topics vary for each conversation. This time, we sat down with music journalist Falk Schacht to talk about ‘Stories of Hip Hop’ – the current exhibition in Pforzheim, Germany, which he helped bring to life.
On his role in the exhibition ‘Stories of Hip Hop’:
I’m responsible for providing the deeper background of hip hop culture and the stories that are told in the exhibition. Both in the booklet, which is on display in the museum, and through info boards next to the objects. For example, when the Daliko shower clock by Flavor Flav is shown in the jewelry display case: Why is there a shower clock hanging next to a dookie gold chain? One potentially costs 20,000 €. The other is 12 €. That’s where I provide the context and the stories.
Why did Flavor Flav wear a watch, for example? Because that was popular slang at the time. Everyone asked “Do you know that time it is?”, and the watch was supposed to say “I know what time it is”. That’s one story I’m telling in the exhibition: Chuck D. or Eazy-E, for example, rocked stopwatches because of this slang. Then the slang turned into a fad, and Flavor Flav said “I don’t care.” And suddenly he was the only one left with a watch, which got bigger and bigger and turned into his iconic image. And by falling out of fashion, he made his own fashion. These are the levels I break down in ‘Stories of Hip Hop.’
In the basement of the museum, there is a timeline of 25-30 meters on the walls, which basically covers the entire historical timeframe of the exhibition. It starts in 1965 and ends in 2001, and I tell the story of hip hop via many milestones of US rap and German rap. In that specific room, there’s five or six showcases as well: There’s Torch’s [German hip hop pioneer] school bag, for example, which he covered with graffiti as a nine-year-old. And his French schoolbook, where you can also sense how a child in the 80s started to get excited about this culture.
Or the tape recorder that was used to record the first Massive Töne [German rap group] record: It was recorded in DJ Friction’s children’s room and he provided the original machine where it still reads “Massive Töne 93” on the reel. You can hardly get any closer to this part of history there, unless, maybe, you break into DJ Friction’s house [smirks]. That’s what I also did at ‘Stories of Hip Hop’: contacting people. “Please come by, bring us stuff, put it on display.”
On ‘Stories of Hip Hop’ being showcased in the Pforzheim Jewelry Museum, the only museum of its kind worldwide:
The concept, the idea, and basically the head curation came from Tom Fritsch and Cornelie Holzach, the museum director. They had the idea of doing a hip hop exhibition, and jewelry was obviously the starting point and the trigger as jewelry is definitely a thing in hip hop.
Jan Sagau came on board to handle the spatial design, and he brought me in as well. And from there, it was obvious: we’re covering chains, watches, rings, earrings, name belts – all the classic jewelry pieces. But when I buy fashion, we might not call it jewelry, but essentially, I’m also decorating my body and communicating something. It’s a form of identity, a way to communicate how you want to be seen by others. It all ties together.
So we wanted to cover both the traditional jewelry angle and this broader definition of ‘adorning’ yourself. We have a sneaker display, for example, that shows the evolution of Jordans alongside sneakers from adidas, Pro-Keds, Starter… or even Ballys [Swiss luxury brand] – not a classic sneaker, but one of those side areas hip hop has reached into. There’s a hat display with Kangols, durags, bandanas, rare caps from Sports Specialties and Starter, the kind NWA made popular, and which now sell for $1,000 or more. And in another room, we’ve got walls full of jackets, tracksuits, and tops.
On presenting hip hop knowledge to people unfamiliar with it:
I definitely had to narrow down my info boards a lot, which I did. I couldn’t go into full detail about said shower clock, for instance. The story is hilarious: some crackhead once stole a box of shower clocks from a store. He was walking around the hood trying to sell them and ran into Flavor Flav. Flav already had a stopwatch around his neck, but this guy talked him into taking one of the shower clocks.
So he basically convinced him, like, “Hey, you already got a watch, but check this one out” and handed it over. That ended up being the start of Flavor Flav’s iconic shower clock-wearing thing. But the backstory also includes a lot of political implications, a lot of issues. I can’t fit all that onto a little display card. So it’s very condensed. The booklet and upcoming book will go into more detail, for those interested.
I also designed the timeline so people could walk through and grasp it just through images. like headlines at a newsstand. For example, the Geltendorf Train is part of the timeline. I included the newspaper headline, ‘Whole Train Covered in Graffiti’ or something like that, and next to it, you’ll find the police investigation letter which shows how desperate the Bavarian police were to catch these teenagers spray-painting trains. So you can just walk by and read the headline. Or, if you feel like it, you can dive deeper and get a feel for what those kids were experiencing.
On the challenge of uniting the history of hip hop in the USA and Germany within one timeline:
Well… you definitely have to embrace leaving gaps [laughs]. I always tried to find events that impacted both sides. Like, if ‘Rapper’s Delight’ was the moment in which rap hit global attention because it was such a massive worldwide hit, then it made sense to show the German cover version by Munich disco legend Harold Faltermeyer and Thomas Gottschalk.
So next to the U.S. version of ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ I added this German cover. And since people still claim that Gottschalk was the first German rapper, I used that as an opportunity to show that’s not true, by placing three or four other German rap tracks from the same year right beside it.
As we get into the ’90s, the German timeline becomes more central, because that scene was really taking shape then. And since the museum is in Baden-Württemberg, we gave the local scene a bigger spotlight toward the end. Like the Southside Rockers, since some of them are from Pforzheim, and one of their dancers, Serkan aka B-Boy Zerk, was also a co-curator. Scotty 76 from the group painted some of the graffiti pieces for the exhibition.
On approaching must-have topics in the exhibition with a twist:
Telling the story of Tupac and Biggie was really important to Tom. I decided to take a slightly different angle with that: I get that the topic got this ‘true crime’ appeal, and that it draws people in. But at the end of the day, they’re both dead. So I included Biggie’s autopsy report, with all the entries from the coroner showing where the bullets entered and exited. To really drive home the point: this isn’t entertainment. This isn’t real life… it’s real death.
But I also wanted to end on a positive note, so I included the Hip Hop Declaration of Peace. In 2001, 300 hip hop pioneers created 18 principles and action steps and officially submitted them to the UN. That was important to me, to show this duality that runs through hip hop. And just like in 1971, when there was a gang meeting in the Bronx to create peace, the Bloods and Crips met for peace in 1992 – just days before the LA riots broke out when the cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted.
That dynamic of up-and-down, this desire for peace but being thwarted by society… that’s the context that gangster rap is embedded in as well. And once you understand that, it becomes clear that gangster rap wouldn’t actually be necessary. It’s a reaction.
Just last year or the year before, then-Finance Minister Christian Lindner rejected child welfare funding, saying “We don’t have 12 billion for that.” That basically seals the deal that the next generation of gangster rap is coming. Because society gets the rap it deserves. If society wants nice, friendly rap, it needs to create nice, friendly conditions. And saying that in a formal museum context is interesting, because you often have people with a very different stance visiting there. But hey, they opened the door, they invited the culture in, so now they’re getting the culture.
On why the timeline of ‘Stories of Hip Hop’ ends in 2001 – but the exhibition doesn’t:
We don’t have that many current-day themes or pieces. The ’80s are really the core focus. Why? Well, first off, we found the ’80s and ’90s to be visually the most exciting. Have you noticed that in the last 20 years, there hasn’t been much visual progress? It’s like we’re stuck in this loop. Tons of micro and retro loops all happening at once. But the ’80s looked totally different from the ’90s, which looked totally different from the ’70s. Since the 2000s, it’s all just minor loops.
With the ’80s content, we could display record covers and magazines to help contextualize everything. But with the rise of digital media, that visual layer started to disappear. And by the 2010s, print was basically dead. So that made things harder. Plus, the pieces we found out in the field mostly came from that era. Like DJ Razé, who basically provided the entire collection of vintage sunglasses, mostly has his focus on the ’80s. So we eventually decided to just stop at 2000. It made things easier.
Visually, it continues with photographer Ondro – he’s also from Pforzheim – and he’s showing key photos from the last 20 years. From 21 Savage and Waka Flocka Flame to Ice Cube in the 2000s, as well as Optik Records, Haftbefehl, and more. We found it interesting to explore that visual and artistic layer – the images people present. Because yeah, we decorate ourselves, but the way you pose or look also communicates something. It’s how you show people: who am I? What’s my identity? That’s the thread running through everything: identity.
On being puzzled by certain grills:
We found a guy who’s currently making a documentary about Eddie Plein, the guy who basically invented grills in New York and then spread them to the South. For the documentary, they made a bunch of replica grills, which we got to use and exhibit. So they’re fakes. But they look just like the originals. Same with the gold chains.
We also have kids’ grills on display. Some of those one can order, make a mold of his teeth at home, send it in, and they make the grill for you. The designers in London made Pokémon and Super Mario grills for their daughters of four and five years old. Because the daughters still have their baby teeth, and they wanted to document them before they fall out.
And that was a moment where I thought: okay, I’m pretty liberal and open-minded, but… Like, this is peak hip hop. You’ve got the original things with Flavor Flav and Just Ice rocking those, society calls them crazy, but in the hip hop world, it’s cool. And I think so too, and used to wrap aluminum foil around my teeth as a kid, and got electrocuted and everything. So my 12-year-old self would’ve loved those kid grills. But I’m not 12 anymore, and I saw them and thought, “Okay, now this is kinda weird to me.”
But it’s just an evolution of what I once thought was cool. And those moments are a reminder for me: “Hey, check yourself. Don’t you become like the people you used to think were lame.” I mean, the kids aren’t getting hurt. They’re having fun. Those are the moments where I learn something too. I’m basically asking the same thing of people coming to this show: that they engage with something they might not know at all and try to understand it. Why people wear gold teeth, or shower clocks around their necks, or do these seemingly absurd things. That was my own little moment of growth.
On favorite pieces in the exhibition:
I think the ‘real fake’ or ‘fake real’ Dapper Dan jackets by Gino, aka Old School Hip Hop Fashion, are incredible. Those, I considered to steal for a second [smirks]. So Dapper Dan from New York used fake MCM and Louis Vuitton leather to design his pieces in the ‘80s. Gino, on the other hand, got a tailor to make a Dapper Dan design using actual vintage MCM leather panels that Gino managed to find. So he basically flipped it: it’s a fake Dapper Dan, made with real MCM. That’s fascinating to me.
That’s something I also told the guides I gave a training to for the ‘Stories of Hip Hop’ tours: the interesting question here is, what’s real and what’s fake? And who decides what’s valuable? Real MCM is supposedly more valuable than what Dapper Dan made. But that’s not really true. Because nowadays, MCM wants to be what Dapper Dan was back then. But back then, they didn’t, and they sued him into oblivion. So the fake is more authentic than the original.
And honestly, there’s just so much stuff I love in ‘Stories of Hip Hop’. The shower clock, the dookie gold chains… just holding the chains and realizing, “Wow, they’re hollow.” Which I could have realized before, because if they were solid, no one could actually perform on stage wearing them. It’s really hard to pick just one artifact though, because there are so many amazing things I’ve never seen in real life before, but only in pictures. To be able to stand in front of them, even touch them, that was incredible.
The ‘Stories of Hip Hop’ exhibition is on display at the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany, until June 29th, 2025.
