Hear that? The bass dropping, the high-hat urging your hips to move? See the hair whipping on beat? These DJs set the soundtrack for global beauty trends and transmit it from their place of pride in the booth.
Identical twins Angel and Dren Coleman's Bronx upbringing has been instrumental in shaping how they present themselves today. When you're raised in the birthplace of hip-hop, it's kind of unavoidable. While the rest of America saw the Bronx aesthetic — sculpted hairstyles, gold teeth, intricate manicures — as déclassé, to Angel and Dren, they were aspirational.," Dren recalls.
"I associate a lot of my Black American beauty references and choices with nostalgia," Dren explains, citing, Lil' Kim, and Aaliyah as women she and her sister admired when they were growing up. The combination of influences come together in Angel and Dren's overall look. Their hair is always worn long, the skirts short, sporty, and tight. Their heels are stilt-high, but low enough to comfortably bust into a dainty-but-soulful two-step.
The pair's bread and butter? Layering modern-day tunes over eclectic rhythms from around the globe. Their appeal is multigenerational, mixing songs any Gen-Z'er would know word-for-word with the ones your auntie remembers from her college days. Though Angel and Dren were born to Jamaican immigrants, their experience is uniquely American, one that in many ways reflects those of first-generation Afro-Caribbean Americans who built hip-hop alongside their Black American kin who have roots in the South. "Black American beauty is what I see in the mirror and it's what I see in Black women every day, [regardless of ethnicity or nationality]," Angel says.
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