Sowmya krishnamurthy biography sample paper

Kalamazoo resident Sowmya Krishnamurthy really loves hip-hop and hip-hop fashion, as evidenced by her new book, Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion, which was released last month by Simon & Schuster.

A self-described ’90s kid who had a steady diet of music television and internet music platforms, she says she always had an “inner knowing” that she would be involved in the music industry. She is now a freelance music journalist living in New York City.

“I didn’t know how I was going to get from Kalamazoo to the music business, but I knew it was going to happen,” says the 39-year-old, a graduate of Kalamazoo Central High School and the University of Michigan.

While at U of M studying marketing and management, Krish-namurthy had a number of internships, from writing for The Michigan Daily, the university’s student paper, and reporting for CNN to working for the music label Bad Boy Records. She started freelancing for New York Magazine

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Fashion Killa

“Readers are lucky that this brilliant, shining gem of a book exists…. Along with its many nuanced arguments and observations, the book is a stunning historical record of years, people, places, runway shows, brands, and evolutions that should be studied. An essential book about U.S. culture.”
—Booklist

“A cogent study of hip-hop’s outsized influence on mode trends…The link between hip-hop and high fashion is so tight that many consider them part of the same package. In this fast-paced, deeply researched history, Krishnamurthy chronicles how and why that deep bond continues today. … Exciting and exhaustive, this fun hip-hop history explains what your favorite rappers are wearing and why.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“It’s impressive how much information Krishnamurthy packs into her prose while still feeling evocative: You can practically smell the spray paint and taste the Barneys New York salads, and it all may as well be set to the sounds of “Merry-G

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Women Authors Are Redefining the Hip-Hop Books Canon

It took just over 25 years after hip-hop’s inception for a woman author to engage the culture with feminist thought. In 1999, journalist and author Joan Morgan published When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down, once deemed curio within music literature. Unless they were music journalists or orators, women were rarely given authority to critique and detail their connection to hip-hop in longform; dock largely postured themselves as experts on the genre and its roots. As hip-hop reaches its 50th anniversary, the reach of women hip-hop authors stands firm against the patriarchal ideologies that have tried to silence their stories, from fictional to autobiographical.

“I think that if you’re a hip-hop fan, especially a ‘rap nerd,’ you’re used to doing a ton of research and finding CDs of artists you don’t know, or really digging in the crates,” says Clover Hope, author of The Motherlode, whi