Entry · catalog no. 1123
high top fade
/ /ˌhaɪ tɑp ˈfeɪd/ /HY-top FAYD
noun · New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
A haircut in which the sides and back are tapered down tight, often to the skin, while the hair on top is grown out several inches and shaped into a level plane with hard corners. The height and the sharpness of the transition line are the entire point of it, and the cut only holds that shape on tightly coiled hair, which is why it is specifically a Black barbering form. Variants carry their own names: the box, the Gumby with its lean to one side, the wedge, and versions with parts or designs shaved into the faded portion.
“He would not sit in nobody's chair but Ray's — that man kept his high top level with a ruler.”
Origin & Attribution
Black barbershops of the mid-1980s, concentrated in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., where barbers already cutting tapered fades began building the top upward instead of down. Its immediate ancestor is the flattop worn by Cameo's Larry Blackmon, and the first hip-hop generation to wear it called it a Cameo cut before high top and hi-top fade settled in around the end of the decade. It spread through rap rather than through fashion media — Big Daddy Kane on 'Long Live the Kane' in 1988, Kid 'n Play on '2 Hype' the same year and then 'House Party' in 1990 made it the visual signature of the era. Calling it an eighties fad misreads what it is: the fade is standing barbershop craft, and the high top was one tall stretch of it.
1988
Big Daddy Kane's 'Long Live the Kane' puts the cut on a landmark album cover
1988
Kid 'n Play's '2 Hype' attaches the style to a specific pair of faces
1990
'House Party' makes the high top a mass-market image of Black teenage style
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. · 1980s
Spoken by
Black barbers and their clientele; the hip-hop generation of the late 1980s
$HIGHTOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising38 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
74/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1988
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Big Daddy Kane, 'Long Live the Kane,' Cold Chillin' Records, cover portrait — June 21, 1988
album · released
■
Kid 'n Play, '2 Hype,' Select Records — October 26, 1988
album · released
■
+ Cite a source'House Party,' directed by Reginald Hudlin, New Line Cinema — March 9, 1990
film · released
See also