{"title":"The Shorthand Series","description":"\u003cp\u003eTAKI 183. Numbers and names that mean nothing to most people and everything to some.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNothing on the front explains itself. Every cap in this series opens into an article explaining the history behind it.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"808-drum-machine-snapback-hat-embroidered-producer-cap-gift-for-beat-makers-old-school-hip-hop-streetwear-music-studio-gift","title":"808 Drum Machine Snapback Hat | Embroidered Producer Cap | Gift for Beat Makers | Old School Hip Hop Streetwear | Music Studio Gift","description":"\u003cp\u003eRed, yellow, white. If you've ever laid hands on the machine, you already know. The 808 was a flop. Roland released it in 1980 at around $1,200 — cheap next to the $5,000 Linn, because instead of playing back recordings of real drums it built its sounds from scratch with analog circuits. Which meant it didn't sound like drums. Producers wanted realism and this thing sounded like a machine pretending. Reviews were mixed. Sales were bad. Roland pulled it in 1983 after building roughly twelve thousand units. Here's the part that gets us. It died because the factory got better. The 808's character came partly from transistors that were out of spec — flawed parts that gave the sound its grit. When semiconductor manufacturing improved, those flawed transistors stopped existing, and so did the 808. It landed on the used market for under a hundred dollars, which put it in the hands of people who couldn't afford anything else. Planet Rock in 1982. Sexual Healing the same year. Then electro, Miami bass, Chicago house, Detroit techno, and eventually every trap record you've ever heard. The machine nobody wanted went on to appear on more hit records than any drum machine ever made — the closest thing electronic music has to the Stratocaster. The colors on this cap aren't decoration. They're the step-sequencer buttons, in order. · Structured mid-profile six-panel, flat brim · 80% acrylic, 20% wool · Adjustable snapback, one size fits most · Head circumference: 21⅝″–23⅝″ (54.9 cm–60 cm) · Three-color embroidery, not printed · Designed by us, printed and shipped by our production partner Ships free. For producers, beat makers, and anyone who knows the sound of a kick that won't stop decaying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKnow the history:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"\/blogs\/the-vault\/the-808\"\u003eThe 808: The Machine That Changed the Sound\u003c\/a\u003e\n— free to read in The Vault.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BX Originals","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54436577182006,"sku":"6A7F2B834FFCE_4797","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0955\/9602\/0022\/files\/897e054e-il_fullxfull.8429699133_p5cd.jpg?v=1787363423"},{"product_id":"taki-183-graffiti-snapback-hat-nyc-street-art-embroidered-cap-blackout-tonal-black-on-black-old-school-hip-hop-gift-for-writers","title":"TAKI 183 Graffiti Hat | NYC Street Art Embroidered Cap | Old School Hip Hop | Gift for Writers","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1969 a Greek kid from 183rd Street in Washington Heights started writing his name. The next summer he took a job as a foot messenger. The company gave him taxi fare. He kept the money and walked instead, and he wrote his name everywhere the job took him — every borough, every line, doorways and trucks and the insides of subway cars. He wasn't the first person to write on a wall. He was the first to be everywhere at once. In July 1971 the New York Times ran a piece on him, trying to work out who this was and why. It was the first time anyone outside the city had heard of any of it. Within months there were hundreds of kids doing the same thing, and one of the four pillars of hip hop had its opening chapter. He's never given up his full name. Half a century on, that still feels right. This cap is black on black — the handstyle embroidered tonal into matte twill, with the date underneath. In a photograph it's almost nothing. In your hand, in raking light, it's all texture. That's deliberate. Not everything needs to announce itself. The back of the hat features a manifesto for writing, \"I wanted people to know it existed.\" \u003cbr\u003e· Structured mid-profile six-panel, flat brim \u003cbr\u003e· 6 embroidered eyelets · 80% acrylic, 20% wool \u003cbr\u003e· Adjustable snapback, one size fits most, Head circumference: 21⅝″–23⅝″ (54.9 cm–60 cm) \u003cbr\u003e· Tonal black embroidery, not printed \u003cbr\u003e· Designed by us, printed and shipped by our production partner Ships free. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor writers, for people who know where this started, and for anyone who prefers their references quiet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BX Originals","offers":[{"title":"Black","offer_id":54436577214774,"sku":"6A81107893D07_4792","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"White","offer_id":54436577247542,"sku":"6A81107893D07_22453","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0955\/9602\/0022\/files\/a0ed9009-il_fullxfull.8387935990_6te9.jpg?v=1787363421"},{"product_id":"1200-turntable-snapback-hat-embroidered-dj-cap-vinyl-record-gift-for-djs-old-school-hip-hop-streetwear-crate-digger-gift","title":"1200 Turntable Hat | Embroidered DJ Cap | Vinyl Record Gift for DJs | Old School Hip Hop Streetwear | Crate Digger Gift","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo numbers and a platter. If you know, you know. The 1200 wasn't designed for hip hop. It was built as a consumer turntable — direct drive, high torque, quartz-locked pitch. Engineers optimized it for accuracy. Then a generation of DJs in the Bronx figured out that a motor that recovered instantly from a hand on the platter meant you could hold a break, ride it back, and drop it again. The machine's precision became an instrument. Nobody at the factory saw that coming. For thirty years it was the only deck that mattered. Two of them and a mixer was the entire barrier to entry for an art form that went global. When production stopped in 2010, DJs treated it like a death in the family. Demand brought it back. This is a structured six-panel snapback with the numerals embroidered clean, the second O built as a platter with the tonearm tracking in. No logos, no loud branding — a quiet nod that gets caught by exactly the people you'd want to catch it. · Structured mid-profile six-panel, flat brim · Adjustable snapback closure, one size fits most. Adjustable circumference from 21 1\/8 - 23 7\/8, (54.9 cm–60 cm) · 80% acrylic, 20% wool · Structured, 6-panel, high-profile · 6 embroidered eyelets · Embroidered front, not printed — it holds up · Designed by us, printed and shipped by our production partner, Printful Ships free. Made for crate diggers, bedroom DJs, anyone who ever carried a milk crate up three flights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKnow the history:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/blogs\/the-vault\/technics-1200\"\u003eThe Technics 1200: The Instrument That Defined a Culture\u003c\/a\u003e — free to read in The Vault.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BX Originals","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54436577378614,"sku":"6A7E803A7B4A0_4808","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0955\/9602\/0022\/files\/261849ff-il_fullxfull.8379751852_alak.jpg?v=1787363422"},{"product_id":"1520-cap","title":"1520 Sedgwick Ave Foundation Hat | Birthplace of Hip Hop Cap | Embroidered Bronx Snapback | Old School Hip Hop Streetwear | Hip Hop Gift","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eOn August 11, 1973, a sixteen-year-old named Cindy Campbell rented the recreation room in the basement of her apartment building for twenty-five dollars. She wanted money for school clothes. She made the invitations by hand and set the door at twenty-five cents for girls, fifty for boys.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eHer older brother Clive handled the music. The neighborhood knew him as DJ Kool Herc.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eWhat he did that night was notice what everyone in the room already felt — that the crowd came alive during the break, the passage where the melody drops out and the drums carry alone. On most records that lasted seconds. So he ran two copies of the same record on two turntables, played the break on one, spun the second back to the top, and cut across just before the first ran out. He called it the merry-go-round. The best fifteen seconds of a record became as long as he wanted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe dancers who waited for it got a name from the man extending it: break boys and break girls. Coke La Rock took the microphone. Four elements, one basement, fifty cents at the door.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe 1520 Cap is the third in our Shorthand series, after the 1200 and the 808 — numbers that mean nothing to most people and everything to some. The first two honor machines. This one honors a building. So it's built the same way a gear cap is built: the front carries the number, the underbrim carries the spec sheet, and the specs are for a hundred and two apartments and one rec room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e1520 Sedgwick Avenue is still standing, still residential, still somebody's home. There's no photograph of it anywhere on this cap, and that's deliberate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eTHE DETAILS \u003cbr\u003e- 80% acrylic, 20% wool \u003cbr\u003e- Structured six-panel snapback, flat brim, high profile \u003cbr\u003e- 6 embroidered eyelets \u003cbr\u003e- Black cap, white embroidery \u003cbr\u003e- BX Originals mark embroidered on back panel \u003cbr\u003e- Element name embroidered on front left panel \u003cbr\u003e- Adjustable plastic snap closure, one size fits most. Head circumference: 21⅝″–23⅝″ (54.9 cm–60 cm) \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBX ORIGINALS — TRUE TO THE CULTURE \u003cbr\u003eHip-hop has four elements: DJing, MCing, Breaking, Graffiti. Each cap in this series carries one, set in that element's own lettering tradition. Not four versions of one graphic — four distinct hands held together by one system. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE BX VAULT \u003cbr\u003eEvery BX Originals piece connects to the BX Vault — our library of long-form writing on hip-hop history and practice. Not marketing copy. Real research on the people, places, and decisions that built this culture. The culture on the cap. The context behind it. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFROM THE BRONX \u003cbr\u003eBX Originals documents hip-hop's four elements from where they started. We're not a fashion brand borrowing an aesthetic. We're building an archive that happens to make things you can wear.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"table-responsive dynamic\"\u003e\u003cstrong class=\"size-guide-title\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"BX Originals","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54457842073910,"sku":"4615416_4792","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0955\/9602\/0022\/files\/1520_hero.png?v=1787661656"}],"url":"https:\/\/bxoriginals.com\/collections\/shorthand-series.oembed","provider":"BX Originals","version":"1.0","type":"link"}