Liked my necklace started relaxin’, that’s what the fuck I call a…
Dre’s
Brown Paper Bag
I don’t know exactly how many carats are in it, but it’s crazy, it’s ridiculous. I don’t wanna guess the number and be wrong, but just know that it’s a gazillion carats; it’s too much to count. Basically, for the price of that chain, you could go out and buy a Range Rover. And not the Range Rover Sport, the expensive Range Rover. This chain will definitely cost you a Range Rover and a good month and a half stay at The Ritz Carlton in Manhattan. This chain right here is about ten Chevys souped up on 26”s. My man Yung Joc has a huge Hustlenomics chain that he’s been sportin’ lately, but when he saw my chain, he looked at it and said, “Wow, now that’s just crazy!” But my favorite reaction was from my man Jay-Z.
28 // OZONE MAG
I was in his office, and he looked at the chain, picked it up and said, “Brown Paper Bags, huh? Aight kid, I see ya. I see ya.” And when Jay-Z says something like that, it’s a big deal. That’s the most you’ll get from Jay, but the fact that he acknowledged it, and knew what it was, that was dope. And Christina absolutely loves it. That’s wifey right there, and she knows that there’s a bunch of Brown Paper Bags-type jewelry she gets also. I gotta keep the wife laced at all times. Also, I gotta shout out my brother Cool, my brother DJ Khaled, and the We The Best album, that record inspired the chain. Pretty soon everybody in the whole Epidemic clique is gonna start wearing those Brown Paper Bag chains with an “E” on it. We’re trying to do it big, man. We’re from the hood, so whenever we get a little opportunity to shine we do it. My man Rick Ross said in a song, “Niggas spend 5,000 on they paint jobs just so life can see ‘em” That was a dope line, and it’s true. When you’re in the hood, you’re stuck, man. Sometimes we might feel like nobody’s paying to attention to us, that’s why we soup up cars. People don’t understand the politics of it at all. We paint our Chevys and put 26”s on them so we can be acknowledged. We want to feel important. We might not have the money to buy Bentleys and Phantoms like rich people do, but we take the little bit of money we do have, and we soup shit up, just so life in general can acknowledge us. That’s how we shine, and that’s what this chain represents. As told to Eric Perrin // Photo by Julia Beverly
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This Brown Paper Bag chain was inspired by a record Cool and I produced for Khaled’s album, “Brown Paper Bag.” A brown paper bag is just so important in life, it ain’t even got to be about hustlin; it’s just life in general. The chain was designed by Emmett, he’s a jeweler out of Houston and he’s crazy with the jewelry. He does all of our stuff; my bracelet, my watch, the Brown Paper Bags piece. It’s got the champagne diamonds, the Epidemic logo on it, and the green diamond in there with the money. I world-premiered it backstage at Summer Jam in New York, and everybody just bugged out. All the rappers, everybody just fell in love with the chain. The chain is in a scene in Khaled’s new video, “I’m So Hood,” and OZONE Magazine is doing a special feature on it, so the whole world is definitely gonna see it!