In the evolution of black barbering according to Kamal Nuru, the list begins with the Fade (which some folks refer to as the Jersey).

The era would have been around 1982. The Fade was a popular haircut dating to the golden age of hip-hop, one in which the sides were cropped close and the puffy hair on top was kept low, an effect achieved using clippers fitted with No. 1 and No. 2 blades.

“A No. 1 is pretty close, so you can still see the scalp,” Mr. Nuru said recently at Levels Unisex, his bustling barbershop on Lexington Avenue in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood.

“A zero,” Mr. Nuru added, referring to clipper gauge, “would be bald.”

The Fade cut eventually gave rise to the Hi-Top Fade, as popularized by rappers. When an angled cut was worked into the longer hair at the top of the head, the Flat-Top (also known as the Box) became the Slope (or the Gumby), and then the Slope eventually became another ridged haircut named for a character played by the actor Kadeem Hardison in the television show “A Different World.”

The Dwayne Wayne, Mr. Nuru explained, “had a little swoop-up like a ramp” and was immensely popular at about the time that Mr. Nuru got into barbering in 1987. By lucky chance, that happened to be at the precise moment when many African-Americans fastened onto the idea of having their coiffures shaved into complex patterns and topiary designs.

“The late ‘80s and early ‘90s were a really great time” for African-American hairstyling, said Mr. Nuru, who is 39. Gazing over the shop, one of three that he owns, he remarked with satisfaction that, the glorious hairstyles of that long ago era had cycled around again.

“The Mohawk came back heavy in the last year,” he said. “And people started playing with their hair again.”

They resumed - and with greater brio than was ever seen in the 1980s, when the rigid machismo of early hiphop culture put a crimp in playfulness - having fun with how they look.

“I used to cut Mickey Mouse into people’s hair, Yankees symbols, any logo or abstract symbol or caricature they could think of,” said Mr. Nuru, whose Islamicized name, he said, means “perfecting God’s light.”

Lately, he said, the so-called retro kids are going back to the styles of the ‘80s, this time adding more intricate patterns and startling neon colors. The designs are limited only by the imagination of barbers like Rico London, who is without any question the star of the show.

“Rico is an artist, straight up,” said Gonzalo Venegas, a member of the rap group Rebel Diaz, as Mr. London shaved what he referred to as “futuristic arrows” on Mr. Venegas’s scalp.

“Once I lay down a line, every design is basically freestyle,” Mr. London explained. “There’s no pattern or nothing. Every haircut is a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece.”


By GUY TREBAY