Dookie Rope Chains in Hip Hop Fashion

If you look at some recent hip-hop videos, or even pictures from parties and concerts, you’ll notice artists such as Lil Jon, Nick Cannon, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Nelly and Nas bringing back the world-famous gold Dookie Run DMC rope chains — or as they were christened in the ’80s, dookie ropes (also known to some as dookie rolls and donkey chains). It’s a trend that’s making MCs think about the true-school innovators like Run DMC who first wore them and what gold ropes symbolized back in the day, as well as what these classic chains mean today.

Has the time come for MCs to put their platinum chains on ice? Not ice as in diamonds - they’ve been doing that for years. This time we’re talking about rappers setting their platinum down on the shelf for a returning favorite that’s old school to the heart like a dookie rope chain.

“It’s my way to pay homage,” says Cannon, whose new publicity shots show him wearing no shirt and a gold dookie rope chain. “Back in the day, most gold Run DMC chains were hollow. I had to go [with] the official one. Everybody been rocking platinum; you can’t tell platinum from stainless steel right now.”

“Platinum chains are wack, unless it’s a rope,” asserts Kanye West, who debuted his new heavy thick fat dookie gold rope in the video for Drive Slow. “I’m not trying to dis nobody’s chain, it’s just wack to me.”

Like Cannon, Kanye says gold dookie Run DMC ropes chains are appealing because they’re a nod to the past. “History repeats itself,” Kanye says. “It was throwbacks [jerseys], my album had the Tribe [Called Quest] sound. Now its gold ropes.”

Lil Jon agrees with Kanye’s theory about throwing it back. “We love the old school,” he says. “Everybody got pleasant memories of the ’80s. That’s when hip-hop was fresh and new, it was like a baby. All those pleasant memories, we trying to bring back. I grew up seeing the Slick Ricks’s, Run DMC’s and Big Daddy Kane’s dooky, but I was a kid — I couldn’t get no big-ass rope chain. I’m grown, I can do that now.”

“Things that are really authentic always return,” says original dookie-rope-rocker DMC Run DMC, one of hip-hop’s earliest innovators on the mic and in the jewelry department. “It ain’t a mere thing of just bringing the gold rope back. It means something.”
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