Gorecki says he’s met plenty of kids over the years who got into skating because of Pharell and his Icecream team. This video helped shovel some coal (or, er, gravy?) into that train’s engine.įor a lot of kids watching, “Frontin’” sparked the beginning of any number of lifelong obsessions. “As synced up as they were, there was still this weird underlying relationship between the two.” He jokes that you couldn’t accuse Pharrell of jumping on what he calls the “skateboarding gravy train” because no such thing existed at the time. “Back then was still pretty misunderstood and kind of awkward for skaters to even dabble in that world ” Gorecki says. Nowadays, with brands like Supreme and Palace at the top of the fashion food chain, the link between skateboarding, streetwear, and hip-hop is undeniable. “Frontin’,” a piece from Virgil Abloh's “Figures of Speech” show at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2021. “‘Frontin’,” Villaseñor declares, “is probably the most important music video for our culture.” The vision of a hip hop-driven, streetwear-inflected lifestyle presented by “Frontin’” in 2003 was basically the blueprint for everything that became cool in the 18 years since. Nigo began collaborating widely stateside. Something funny happened after that, he says. “It was a preview of Billionaire Boys Club], and I remember I was like, ‘What is that T-shirt? I need that, I need the Icecreams,’” Villaseñor says. He was almost 10 at the time, and remembers instantly grabbing onto every reference in the clip.
Rhude designer Rhuigi Villaseñor was one of those guys.
For a certain kind of young man, it was revolutionary. Always lingering in the background is a halfpipe, welcoming skaters and red Solo cups in equal measure. Jay-Z, in a banana-yellow shirt, appears momentarily, mostly through the lens of a digital camera. Lanisha Cole utters the secret phrase-“Neptunes Presents the Clones”-to enter the party, and immediately catches Pharrell’s eye. Lenny Kravitz mingles with Japanese streetwear designer Nigo. In just over four minutes, the video for “Frontin,’” Pharrell’s 2003 single, tours us through a house party in Miami.
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