Let me tell you something that I believe with complete conviction, and that I think the fine jewellery industry has been too slow to say out loud.
Hip hop is not a trend. It is not a subcategory. It is not a niche market to be tolerated on the edge of a trade show floor while the “serious” jewellery sits in the centre of the room.
Hip hop is the most powerful cultural force on the planet. And the jewellery it has created, inspired, and elevated deserves to stand in the finest light this industry has to offer.
That is exactly why we created the Best Hip Hop Jewellery category at the Award of Excellence. And that is why, this past Sunday night, I was prouder of that award than I have been of almost anything we have done in the history of this publication.
The Numbers That Silence Every Doubt
If anyone in this industry still needs convincing that hip hop deserves a seat at the table — not a folding chair in the corner, but a full seat at the main table — let the numbers do the talking.
The global hip hop industry generated over twenty-five billion dollars in revenue in a single year. The global streetwear industry, heavily influenced by hip hop culture, was valued at one hundred and eighty-five billion dollars and is projected to grow to three hundred and thirty billion dollars by 2030. Hip hop is an industry with a total economic impact of sixteen billion dollars, having launched Black-owned businesses across music, film, fashion, and advertising. The genre contributes over fifteen billion dollars to the U.S. economy every single year through merchandise, music sales, and concert revenue.
Hip hop music accounts for more than thirty percent of all on-demand streams in the United States, and over seventy percent of the top ten singles in the U.S. were by hip hop artists. Approximately one point eight five billion people — twenty-six percent of all global music listeners — enjoy rap and hip hop.
This is not a subculture. This is the dominant culture. And it has been driving jewellery sales — bold, ambitious, technically extraordinary jewellery sales — for decades.
What Hip Hop Did For Jewellery
Here is the truth that the fine jewellery industry has not always been willing to say: hip hop saved the bold end of this market.
When the broader jewellery world was trending toward minimalism, toward quiet luxury, toward the understated and the restrained — hip hop was going in the opposite direction entirely. It was stacking chains. It was icing out pendants. It was commissioning pieces of such jaw-dropping scale and technical complexity that the craftspeople making them were being pushed to the absolute limits of their skill and imagination.
And in doing so, hip hop culture did something extraordinary for this industry. It created a new generation of jewellery clients. Young, passionate, financially committed buyers who did not inherit a love of fine jewellery from their grandmothers — they discovered it through the artists they admired, through the culture they lived, through the visual language of a movement that has always understood that what you wear is a declaration of who you are and where you come from.
Hip hop turned jewellery into identity. Into story. Into statement. And the jewellers who understood that — who built their craft inside that culture, who learned its language and served its community with genuine respect and genuine skill — those jewellers built some of the most loyal, most passionate, most lucrative client relationships in the entire industry.
This Year’s Finalists
This year, four extraordinary finalists were nominated for the Best Hip Hop Jewellery award. Four jewellers who did not approach this category from the outside looking in — they are of this culture, shaped by it, committed to it, and producing work that represents it at the highest possible level of craftsmanship and creativity.
Hijran Ali Boyaci of West Gold and Diamonds — whose extraordinary range earned a double nomination at this year’s Gala, appearing in both the Young Jeweller and Hip Hop categories. That is not a coincidence. That is a statement about a talent that refuses to be defined by a single category or a single ceiling.
Haaris Ahmad of Diamond Touch Toronto — a jeweller whose work sits at the precise intersection of hip hop culture and fine jewellery craftsmanship, whose pieces carry the visual language of the streets and the technical mastery of the bench simultaneously.
Mohannad Kilani of Kilani Custom Design — a custom jewellery specialist whose clients come to him not for something off the shelf but for something completely their own. A jeweller who understands that in hip hop culture, the custom piece is not the luxury version of jewellery — it is the only version worth having.
And Esa Felicio of Felicio and Co — a name that represents the next generation of hip hop jewellery design in Canada, whose work has been turning heads and earning recognition in a category that rewards only those who are genuinely, authentically part of the culture they serve.
Why This Category Belongs in the Award of Excellence
I want to address something directly, because I know that in some corners of this industry, the inclusion of a hip hop jewellery category in our most prestigious awards event raised an eyebrow or two.
To those eyebrows I say this: look at the work. Just look at the work.
The technical complexity of a fully iced-out pendant. The precision required to set hundreds of stones in a seamless pattern across a three-dimensional surface. The custom fabrication, the CAD design, the casting, the finishing — the level of craft involved in producing the finest hip hop jewellery is as demanding, as rigorous, and as worthy of recognition as anything else we celebrate at the Award of Excellence.
And beyond the craft, there is the cultural significance. Hip hop jewellery represents a community. It represents an identity. It represents the self-expression of a generation of clients who have chosen this industry as the place where they invest their money, their trust, and their personal story. We do not get to pick which clients matter. Every client who walks through a jewellery store door matters. Every community that has chosen fine jewellery as part of their culture matters.
If our industry is going to endure — if it is going to grow, evolve, and remain relevant to every generation of Canadian buyer — it needs to celebrate every form of extraordinary jewellery work. Without exception. Without reservation. Without a hierarchy of which craft is more worthy of a spotlight.
That is what the Best Hip Hop Jewellery award stands for. And I will defend its place in this Gala for as long as I have the privilege of running it.
The Winner Will Be Revealed in the Next Issue
The 2026 Best Hip Hop Jewellery winner has been chosen. And the story behind that win — the craft, the culture, the vision, and the journey of the jeweller who earned it — is one of the most compelling pieces we have ever had the privilege of publishing.
It will be told in full in the next issue of Canadian Jeweller Magazine. With the photography it deserves. With the depth and the respect that this category, these finalists, and this community have earned.
Subscribe to the Print Edition
The complete Best Hip Hop Jewellery feature — including the winner reveal, the full profiles of all four finalists, and every Award of Excellence winner across all twelve categories — is published in the next issue of Canadian Jeweller Magazine.
This is not the issue to read on a screen. This is the issue to hold in your hands, to pass around your showroom, to keep on your coffee table as a document of where this industry stands in 2026 and where it is headed.
Subscribe to the print edition of Canadian Jeweller Magazine today.
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Because the culture that is shaping the future of this industry deserves to be told in print.
Olivier Felicio is the CEO and Publisher of Canadian Jeweller Magazine and Time & Shine Jewellery Trade Show, Canada’s leading jewellery trade show and awards platform.
