WHY WE COSIGN: As far as we can remember, Manhattan’s Soho district has been the place to cop the latest sneakers, T-shirts, fitteds, and basically anything else considered to be poppin’ in the streetwear world. But while Manhattan always held us down, until recently not much could be said about the other four boroughs (except Vinnie’s Styles, we see you!) Back in 2005, Gene Han noticed the void in Brooklyn and decided to fill it by opening his own boutique: Wealthy Ho$tage. Dedicated to stocking only the dopest product it can get its hands on and giving new brands a chance to shine, this shop is helping to make BK a desired cool-guy shopping destination.
Located just south of Prospect Park on Church Ave., Wealthy Ho$tage specializes in kicks, T-shirts and hoodies, denim, and accessories—basically everything you need to get fly. By being extra picky about what they stock, even well-known labels like ALIFE, Penfield, PRPS, HUF, and Sabit NYC have to come correct just to get their product on the shelves. No matter what your style, you’re guaranteed to get the best of best. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, these guys even stock Tier 0 Nikes. That alone makes this shop worth the trip over the bridge.
Read on for our interview with Gene Han, pics of the store, and the address/web site…
Ah, another present from Uncle Hov. In 2007, Fabolous remade two unreleased Jay-Z demo songs—”Make Me Better” and “Return of the Hustle”—into singles for his album From Nothin’ To Somethin’. And now, Fab is back with a video for one of the standout tracks on Loso’s Way, a Jermaine Dupri-produced cut that originally leaked back in January…as a Jay-Z song. “Where The Money Goes” was rumored to be an outtake from American Gangster, but Fab got his hands on it and kept Jay on the hook. Interestingly, this is also the first cameo Jay-Z has made in another rapper’s video since Freeway’s “What We Do” in 2003. Can’t stop the Brooklyn bromance!
Cast members from The Real World: Brooklyn pose before being forced to run their garments. We wish.
What happens when a completely contrived reality series moves to a real-ass New York City borough home to real-ass people who will really blast a second hole in that ass if you look at them the wrong way? The world will find out tonight at 10 PM EST when MTV premieres The Real World: Brooklyn. Well, it would if the show'with all its manipulated racial, sexual, religious and socioeconomic tension'weren’t complete bullshit.
The eight fraudulent fame whores whose names we won’t even put on blast here were no doubt guarded from the Brooklyn realness, so Complex can only imagine what could have been if they’d stopped being polite and actually experienced these hallmarks of real life in BK…
As a member of Bad Boy’s Hitmen collective, Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie was undoubtably one of the greatest hip-hop producers of the '90s. While helming countless hits and mentoring a young Kanye West, D-Dot’s other claim to fame became his hilarious alter-ego, The Mad Rapper. What began as a skit on Bad Boy albums that parodied player-hating underground MCs culminated in a full album on Columbia in 2000. And in a strange case of life imitating art, D-Dot allegedly assaulted an editor at Blaze magazine for exposing his character’s “secret” identity.
Nearly a decade later, D-Dot still works sporadically with Bad Boy artists, but his bitter persona has been pretty quiet until now. A new Mad Rapper song called “Brooklyn Let’s Go Part 1″ leaked a few days ago, and D-Dot is trading bars on it with the younger generation of his borough: Red Cafe, Maino, Wais P (from Da Ranjaz), Papoose and Joell Ortiz. Hear the song after the jump.
NAME: Dorian
