When ASAP Rocky’s mysterious creative agency AWGE drops a new music video, one can expect to see some memorable outfits. Just look toward “Wave Gods,” which features Nas and ASAP Rocky, as a prime example. Hit-Boy opens the video propping up a pair of speakers on an apartment window sill while donning a Louis Vuitton football jersey designed by Virgil Abloh. Meanwhile, ASAP Rocky plays dice in a Supreme Gore-Tex jacket that features a still of Nas in the opening scene of Belly. Fittingly, Nas later appears in the music video wearing the exact white Avirex jacket he wore in the iconic Hype Williams movie. Of course, these styling choices don’t happen by coincidence but are calculated moves by stylists who work behind the scenes.
“Our goal was to try to pay homage to old Nas music videos. Everything, including Belly,” says Moses “Zay” Fofana, who is better known on Instagram as @Whoknowszay, a stylist who worked with the video’s Lead Stylist Daquan Earle and fellow stylist Raluchukwu Chime to help bring looks for ASAP Rocky, Nas, and Hit-Boy in the “Wave Gods” video to life. “So I was like ‘OK, let me try to match his old persona to a new persona. Because overall he was working with ASAP Rocky. Our goal was to put both of those worlds together. The new school and the old school.”
Zay is the young 26-year-old stylist who is putting together some of the best looks for rappers ranging from Matt Ox to BKtherula. Alongside Earle, Zay helped style the artists in recent AWGE music videos like “Wave Gods” and “Doja.” Zay is also the stylist for the rapper Snot—he dresses him in archival Kapital, Undercover, and Raf Simons pieces for recent music videos like “Doja’’ and major festival performances like Rolling Loud. Zay, who previously worked as a model, has only been styling for the past two years. But he, along with other aforementioned stylists, have recently worked with genre-bending creatives like Hidji and Spike Jordan on music videos, and caught the attention of Instagram tastemakers like Hidden.NY. Now, Zay is even styling Super Bowl champions like Ogbo Okoronkwo of the Los Angeles Rams.
We caught up with Zay to learn more about his work styling music videos, how he built his wardrobe, his experiences working with Hidji and the creatives at AWGE, and the advice he has for any young stylists looking to break into the industry.