I Never Thought I'd See This Again

Does everyone remember back in the day, circa 1990, when the coolest thing going was the hi top fade? You all remember the high top fade, right? If not, here's the most famous hi top fade ever.

This, of course, is the famous duo, Kid N Play. Kid, on the left, rocked the quintessential box cut and if he's famous for anything else, then I don't know what it is. My man Play, on the right, rocked a far more standard box cut with a bit of a Gumby rolled in.

Here's some other fine examples of great box cuts:


It didn't seem like it at the time, but this is a pretty stupid haircut. I mean, by and large, it's just funny looking on most people. Add to that the various designs and permutations that people made to it, think Bobby Brown circa Humpin' Around, and it's clear that this was a style that had gotten way out of hand.



Also I think this style suffered from the fact that white people were also in the midst of really bad hairstyles and blatant overdoing in their cuts as well. It was a worldwide phenomenon. The pre-Clinton era was just a bad time for hair around the world. Exhibit A:

This is too awesome not to be real.

Anyway, I'm not making this up, the hi top fade is on the comeback. There are several kids in the high school I work in rocking the box cut today as we speak. I thought I had gotten my fill of making fun of kids with box cuts in 1993, but I was wrong. It's just as fun today to make fun of kids with the box/fade.

I think this current woebegotten trend started itself with the arrival of one Brandon Jennings on the scene. Brandon Jennings is known for two things: The first is that he's the kid who was the number 1 ranked high school basketball player who opted to play professionally in Europe rather than go to college for a year. The second is that in high school he rocked a box with fade. Seriously.


Since I've started teaching high school there have been several trends that have boggled my mind - wearing 3XL solid colored t-shirts, chicken noodle soup (with the soda on the side), having babies (which I was once told was "in style"), and so forth - but this box with fade trend coming back is the one that I really just wouldn't believe unless I had seen it with my own two eyes.