In the mid-1990s, he joined his first rap crew, Children of the Corn. Membership required clothes as impressive as one's rhymes -- Sergio Tacchini track suits in particular. "I had to make sure I was on point" around the other rappers, Giles recalled. "They used to go all the way downtown to look for stuff nobody would have. Growing up with them was a privilege."
Giles found stardom as a soloist in 1998 when his album Confessions of Fire went gold. A follow-up, Come Home With Me, in 2002, went platinum and reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts.
Although he has not had the mainstream popularity of P. Diddy or Jay-Z, he is Harlem's most prominent rapper, famous for a sort of avant-garde gangster rap that is dense with polysyllabic rhyme schemes and fashion references.
Giles credits his stylist, Monica Morrow, with introducing him to pink. "I came up with it," Morrow said, "but him putting it on made everyone fall in love with it."
RSS