has a music video featuring the Juelz Santana, Just Blaze track and footage from the making of the Second Coming commercial shown above for Nike's new Air Force 25 sneaker.
Tip via Michael Miraflor.
Update:
Here's the behind the scenes music video but Freshness Mag is still worth a look.
Louis called R.sole that opened earlier this year with more to follow.
From the :
Consistent with the overall store aesthetic, Tobin+Parnes' designers covered the front windows in translucent vinyl with geometric cutouts, allowing passer-bys only a glimpse of the interior.
Although it was risky, our team decided to use a non-sell, selling strategy because it would appeal to serious collectors and also act as a lure for other customers, said Vlad Zadneprianski, of Tobin+Parnes.
Also from the :
Dark gray finishes are used on the millwork, the floor, ceiling and walls, recalling a designer's black box, and imparting the attitude of a hip exclusive nightclub. The checkout station was designed to be easily converted into a DJ station for parties and community events.
I was disappointed to not find a photo of the checkout to DJ station conversion but I'm in touch with these folks and expect to follow up in the future either in relationship to this store or to others that are opening soon.
Inside and out!
Dude, it's got Eminem's name on it!
It's good to see Eminem , literally.
By the way, these are an early look at the first two designs. There are more to come.
Update:
According to various commenters, who probably know, the Proof shoe is an Air Max 1. I took the Air Max 90 label from today's press release that otherwise had no additional info beyond the release to which I linked above.
Posted by Clyde on August 30, 2006 in Though the focus has been on the shoes, the Starbury Collection includes almost fifty items for men and boys, including jackets, jeans, hoodies, tshirts, athletic tops and shorts, lifestyle and performance sneakers, work boots, hats and other accessories with most items priced at $10 or less.
But it's the shoes that have caught everyone's attention. Stephon Marbury's claim that he will wear Starbury One's in the upcoming NBA season remains one of the biggest marketing angles that will make a crucial difference in the longevity of the collection.
Speaking of marketing, Erin Patton who's heading up the Starbury One marketing campaign for The Mastermind Group was director of the Jordan Brand at Nike for five years .
In addition, Marbury's marketing representatives, Jordan Bazant and Peter Raskin of The Agency Management, and urban marketing agency The Run Group were involved with developing the collection.
I haven't seen much on initial sales of the Starbury One but Lang Whitaker, who attended a , also passed along reports of including this:
I just got word that when the Steve and Barry’s store in Manhattan Mall opened this morning, there were about 500 people in line outside the store. The people came charging in when the doors opened, and the store completely sold out of Steph’s shoes.
Really. They were bringing in shoes from the back, people kept coming in to get their kicks, and even the actual Steve and Barry were having to work the registers to help get people through there.
I can't help but wonder who passed along that glowing report.
In any case, I missed out on all the release day excitement because there are in my neck of the woods. That's a big limit on what the Starbury Collection can do but, then again, it seems like a proposition in which both Stephon Marbury and Steve Barry's are building together.
I was checking out the press release announcing the and started wondering if the low price point would bring out the haters.
So I checked the initial comments at and was pleasantly surprised to find that even the jokes had a positive edge.
cbrizzle Says:
A ROUND OF STARBURY 1′S ON ME!!
!!!
!!!
spanish jay a.k.a Mr.
يشوع Says:
15 bucks for the new Marbury’s
couple that with “take (?)back(?) the land movement” and we got something
Obviously you can't take one blog's comments section as a stand-in for the populace at large but these comments made me very happy, not for Starbury, but for those broke ass kids who may finally get a cool cheap pair of sneakers without having assholes give them a hard time for being poor.
Not that they won't but you know what I mean.
[Note: I'm not describing the commenters at Nah Right as assholes but they don't hold back if they don't like something.']
I'll be so mad if Stephon Marbury ends up with shoes that simply look like Starbury's while short changing kids.
Let's hope he really is keeping it real and that he's also got somebody smart keeping an eye on the shoemakers.
I'll be back with more on the early stages of the Starbury campaign but here's the if you're interested.
Posted by Clyde on August 16, 2006 in [Plus the many reasons I will never review a screener copy again.
Please see related update.]
Last night I finally watched , a documentary about sneakers, hip-hop the corporate game and found it to be an enjoyable film that could be viewed as a hip hop history flick covering the emergence of the sneaker freak from the growth of b-boy culture, as a context specific study of the power of hip hop marketing or as an example of the fact that real people who really care about something are always more interesting than famous people who can simply buy a lot of merchandise and store it in walk-in closets.
If you're interested in more details regarding the movie, provides what could be described as an outsider's view with many accurate depictions of what occurs combined with an honest admission of lack of interest in the subject matter.
As out of the loop as Gil shows himself to be, he still gets some key points spot on:
Damon Dash sucked the life out of Paper Chasers and he does it again here, droning on about how he never wears the same pair of sneakers twice and showing off his sneaker closets, which manage to be both extravagant and completely slovenly at the same time.
The reality is, the more famous the figure in the film, except for D.M.
C. who drops an animated tale of the origins of My Adidas from the mind of a dusted out Russell Simmons (yes, he was smoking that dust!), the less interesting they are in comparison to the lesser knowns:
The last parts of the film only really bristle with energy when an individual interviewee gets excited over a tale of discovering vintage kicks in a dingy basement or far-flung store.
My own experience is that Damon Dash's brief appearances fall flat and make him look bad but that such moments don't undermine the overall film and I, for example, found the 50 Cent section well worth seeing in the context of the film, though it seemed to baffle Gil that anyone could care about G-Unit sneakers.
But most of the people in the film talk about stuff they care deeply about, whether the person talking is a hip hop journalist, an obsessive sneaker freak or an old school emcee, it really doesn't matter. These people show their love for and knowledge of the topic and that's the heart of the experience.
Gil does clarify the fact that the DVD includes bonus footage, something that I could not get from the , from or from a wack ass screener copy designed to cut down on bootlegging and resales.
Even though the DVD was released in early June, somebody still felt it was appropriate to send me a screener copy without menus or extras, perhaps suggesting that my coverage wasn't worth the cost of a new copy or that I'm lumped into a category of blogger that is considered a potential bootlegger or that, maybe, I might make a few bucks for my trouble by reselling the DVD, a time honored practice by reviewers who are typically underpaid for their efforts or paid only in free merch.
Gil describes the EXTRAS :
The menus deserve mention since their clean, simple design both mimics classic sneaker styling and just looks great.
The extras consist of a series of six additional segments, including an ode to the late Jam Master Jay (DJ and style-originator for Run DMC) as well as additional interviews. There is also a collection of trailers for other hip hop themed DVD releases.
I also tend to appreciate things like good menu design and based on the opening and closing credits and the graphics that appeared to have been created for the film itself, I bet they looked nice too.
And, hey, who doesn't want to take a few minutes and see how folks are paying homage to Jam Master Jay, especially since was a fucking revelation at the time and a clear statement that hip hop was changing in a way that the indie rock crowd in North Carolina could appreciate, especially following the release of The Beastie Boys' . And thank goodness for that cause things were starting to look pretty corny by that point in time.
So this is the last screener copy of a DVD I will ever review.
Back when I was still reviewing CDs, I refused to review sampler copies or CDs that had annoying voiceovers to remind you that YOU ARE LISTENING TO SUCH AND SUCH SPIT SUCH AND SUCH FROM SUCH AND SUCH and basically making it impossible to immerse oneself in the music.
Considering this DVD was released in early June after having already been released in theaters a year before, to treat a reviewer as a potential bootlegger is insulting. Because the topic matter is so relevant to what I'm doing at present, I feel it's worth discussing and I enjoyed the documentary enough to only get mildly pissed at the recurring text that sometimes obscured the names of people I didn't recognize in order to remind me that this wasn't for sale or distribution or whatever the fuck it said.
And I was even willing to overlook the fact that the segments in French with the director of La Haine did not have subtitles, even though I really wanted to know what he had to say. But this is the last time I get suckered on the treating reviewers like potential bootleggers tip, cause it's a bad move in the first place and I'm trying to learn not to reward bad moves.
In case you haven't noticed, all the seriously damaging early leaks of product, from major album releases to Oscar nominated films, come from insiders.
If I was set up to bootleg this thing, I'd just get a rental copy or buy a cheap copy from Amazon and for just a few bucks have the source material to make as many copies as I wished.
And that leads to an important marketing question, is the loss of goodwill worth whatever was hoped to be gained by such a maneuver?
Given the fact that I was directly contacted by an executive producer Thierry Daher (or someone with access to his email account, lol) and that every other aspect has been positive for me, to the point that I'm also going to push his electronic goodie bag concept in a separate post with more promo graphics, why undermine yourself with such petty nonsense?
In any case, that ain't happening again.
Update After Response From Theirry Daher:
I'm going to leave my initial response up because I think it's a good example of how a blogger's going to post what they write as soon as they write it (even when there's a delay in getting to a project) and that, if there are misconceptions, they generally get cleared up after the fact.
In this case, Thierry Daher wrote me back to let me know that, among other things, the copy he sent me was the only one available at the time from the distributor and that as an independent producer he has to work in cooperation with a lot of folks.
I can appreciate that. I actually wasn't going to bring it up and then when I read a review that included extras, that's when I felt short changed which then connected all the other dots. It's also a result of getting too many promo music CDs that were entirely unlistenable for reasons described above.
Marketing's so tough precisely because you can do one thing and it can be taken in a totally different light. But Mr. Daher did the smart thing, rather than going off on me, he simply explained what happened and I found it quite convincing.
Thanks!
Although the story of Sneaker Freaks as portrayed in mainstream media has a fairly standardized form at this point, to the genre with her brief portrait of Dave Jeff, owner of Chicago sneaker and clothing shop PHLI.
His ingenuity and ability to feed off the desires of the sneaker freak is inspiring, at least as portrayed by Jackson, and seems to have emerged organically from his own status as a devotee:
He got started in the business when a friend asked him to help start a South Side rare-shoe store, but it failed after his associate went to jail.
He formed a marketing company and sold shoes from his Hyde Park living room, paying $90 to $100 a pair and reselling them for $150 to $200 a pair. Then he hit on the idea of slapping photos of his shoe collection -- he had 300 pairs -- on shirts, grouped in themes of shoe styles. They were hot sellers in Chicago.
..
And now he's latched onto another revenue steam: hosting parties, with admission fees, for sneaker releases.
About 500 attended his first, a freebie for the LeBron James Chamber of Fear shoe launch. His second event brought 700 people.
It's his ability to pull from all of Nike's catalogs as opposed to only a couple, as is the case with most Nike retailers, that keeps sneaker fans coming.
As soon as they see shoes on the Internet. The 'head knows. Jeff said.
The phone will start ringing.
I've seen shirts like that though I don't know if they were his. What a great way to leverage someone else's brand!
Given the Internet references, one might expect a web link but just try finding Phli online and you may encounter some difficulties. I'm assuming is the new site but I can't say for sure. I bet some of my readers could fill us in if they have the time.
Posted by Clyde on July 19, 2006 in Michael Miraflor posted about the aka The Wolfpack who are a young group out of the Bay Area. My first impression was that it was a Vans product placement posing as a spontaneous song, not because they mention Vans, but because some of the lines read like ad copy.
However, I touched base with and his impression, without knowing a whole lot for sure, is that they just did the song cause that's where they're at.
He also said that he used to wear Vans and caught total hell in the rap scene. Now he realizes he should have made a song about it.
I checked in with another source who's talked to The Pack but didn't really talk much about the song.
This source's impression was that they just did it, would love to have Vans' endorsement, but didn't necessarily do the song with that in mind.
I don't know, if I was a smart post-My Adidas kid, I'd do the song hoping to get the endorsement. In any case, it's blowing up in the Bay.
Update:
Apparently there's now a response song dissing Vans. has the info. In case you get confused, you have to hover over words to find the links.
But otherwise it's a great blog.
Adidas-Salomon AG Chief Executive Officer Herbert Hainer plans to return Reebok to its roots as a sports goods supplier after the struggling unit . .
. forgot that its core was in sport, Hainer, 51, said late yesterday . .
. Adidas, the world's second-largest sporting-goods maker, is trying to draw customers back to Reebok by expanding its position in running, basketball and soccer and lines such as Rbk Classics. Reebok's orders fell 22 percent at the end of 2005 on concern by retailers about the acquisition and consumers' preference for European-style thin-soled sneakers over Reebok's Classic line.
The S. Carter shoe broke Reebok sales records and sold-out
in-stores on April 18, 2003.
Apparently Shawn didn't make magic with the S.
Carter Collection, even with 50 Cent helping demonstrate how they cross brand with G-Unit:
But it must have been 2005's campaign that was the big failure for Reebok's lifestyle approach, one that relied heavily on the crossover of music and sports seen in hip hop, since :
Our decision to challenge the industry paradigm and expand our successful. Rbk has helped us to improve our performance in the response to our new Rbk music products. During the quarter, our G-Unit and S.
Carter product collections achieved very strong double digit sell through success. Later this year, we will expand our music product collections to include boots, tennis and cross training models.
Apparently, a vision that started out with such high hopes, eventually fell prey to .
But the real question is, if the consumers want European-style thin-soled sneakers , don't you think ?
Posted by Clyde on May 21, 2006 in The is making its way to Berlin. Here are some that has been on tour since February.
Marketing needs more Clyde!
Posted by Clyde on April 28, 2006 in As they'll be leaving hip hop behind with a focus on athletes. Paul Harrington, Reebok Prez and CEO, stated "that the 'I am what I am' campaign will continue, although it will subtly shift away from entertainers and focus more heavily on athletes.
"
I guess the subtle part will be where they don't lose the lifestyle folks in the process? Or where they don't then become the lower priced, less serious athletic shoe brand?
This shift in focus would also seem to raise questions about the November announcement of "Reebok-branded TV programs for a new Comcast Corp.
on-demand hip-hop channel."
Posted by Clyde on April 27, 2006 in is a wonderful (yes, I said wonderful!) blog of street art that occasionally crosses into ProHipHop terrain.
In particular, they have a nice piece about that was causing a commotion a while back for an image on the shoe's tongue.
There's also the tale of Ryan Frank's , supposedly a piece of furniture left in an active graffiti zone that is resold once decorated by the locals! That seems plausible for the piece they show, but there's another piece that simply looks like it was .
Actually, according to , he leaves a blank white board out to be graffitied and then that is cut up to create the Hackney Shelf. Interesting idea.
Posted by Clyde on April 24, 2006 in Though I can understand why a company might have mixed feelings about accusations of racism, is never a good look:
The criticisms amount to Internet garbage, said Keith Hufnagel, owner of Huf, the United States clothing designer that produced the shoe for Adidas.
Though ProHipHop's contribution goes unrecognized in the above article, we're happy to have generated quite a bit of garbage with our previous post on the topic.
And, in the hot tips department, if you plan on dismissing critics, it is possible to do so without being a total a-hole about it, Mr. Hufnagel.
Posted by Clyde on April 18, 2006 in Sneaker companies do some of the more interesting hip hop related campaigns, for example, the short film/ads currently featured at including the Mos Def directed short sequence to a beat called Imagination.
Converse and the nonprofit Global Artists Coalition, along with Footlocker and Foot Action, have also announced that they are presenting the at New York's Webster Hall on Friday. This event has been presented previously in Miami, LA and DC and is described as drawing over 2,500 visitors (per event or all together?
).
In any case, such events are more about reaching tastemakers and building cred than marketing to a mass audience though I can easily imagine getting a great ad out of the Converse Sneaker Art Battle.
Hosted by Bobbito Garcia and Hot 97 DJ Raqiyah, the Converse All Star Hip-Hop Tribute will include:
* The “Converse Sneaker Art Battle,” which offers emerging artists the opportunity to show off their graffiti and illustrative art skills by “tagging” a classic white Pro Leather shoe, similar to the ones once worn by Julius Irving, with their own inspired creations.
Participants’ pieces will be judged and considered for a special limited-edition athletic shoe from Converse.
* Hip-hop historian Curtis Sherrod’s rare hip-hop handbills. Part of the world’s largest collection, the objet d'arts promoted legendary old-school parties during the late ’70s and early ’80s, and were previously shown at the Rock Roll Hall of Fame Museum.
* Photojournalist Jamel Shabazz’s gritty snapshots of the emerging hip-hop scene from 1980-1989 – before it became what is today’s multi-million-dollar multinational industry. The photos are from his critically-praised books Back in the Day and A Time Before Crack.
* A special performance by Bam the Liquid Robot, whose hip-hop dance routines are enthusiastically acclaimed for their passionate virtuosity and stylistic flair.
Known for his work in movies, commercials and with superstar artists, Bam has been called “the next level” by Vibe magazine.
* The vocal innovation of Kid Lucky and his freewheeling and funky oral orchestra. Perhaps the preeminent beat box artist in the world today, Doug E.
Fresh has said, “Kid Lucky is doing something I wish I would have thought of.”
* The trailblazing ensemble Asa Yaa. Boasting musicians, dancers and singers, and glorifying the connection between African culture and modern African-American art, this Brooklyn-based company has toured the world to great acclaim.
Quite a lineup.
Posted by Clyde on April 17, 2006 in Oliver Wang shares his take on a that involves an Adidas Y1 HUF designed by a half-Chinese (and half what?) artist who often addresses racial stereotypes in his art.
The image has inspired protest against the use of what appears to be a .
I'm both sympathetic to Oliver's well reasoned and thoughtful discussion and, yet, have real problems with many of Oliver's statements. But you can judge for yourself.
I stopped digging into that kind of thing once I realized that very little of what I used to put forth at had any kind of impact and that I felt increasingly disenfranchised when discussing issues of hate speech and imagery with left/lib hip hop bloggers.
But I do want to point to the problematic issue of hip hop bloggers ranking which struggles are the most appropriate ones on which to spend our time. Of course, such issues aren't limited to hip hop bloggers, but it seems to be the theme with which many hip hop bloggers dismiss issues of language and imagery, which seems really bizarre since they critique such things on a regular basis.
Much more important than my concern with hip hop bloggers who are still a minor force in the media universe (for the most part), it triggers my dismay with the fact that hip hop in general seems to have forsaken Africa, even when they're wearing those groovy clothes, unless they're getting paid to perform in South Africa.
If you're going to start ranking issues of concern and you're involved with hip hop, why aren't you discussing Africa?
Militias called janjaweed, recruited from Arab tribes in Darfur and Chad and supported by the Sudanese government, continue to attack, rape and kill villagers from African tribes — more than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and two million have fled their homes.
When the Reverend Jackson—the president's ambassador of democracy to Africa—accompanied Clinton to that continent, he witnessed Clinton's apology to the people of Rwanda for failing to have done anything to stop the genocide there. But Sudan was not included on the trip, as both Clinton and Jackson turned their faces away from the slavery and killings in that nation.
In a BBC report from 2000, it's stated that, at that time, :
more than wars, famines and floods.
Millions of children are orphans, many more live with HIV or Aids.
I could go on but you get my point. Many parts of Africa have been a disaster for a long time.
How much of that is due to European colonization and how much is due to the fact that humans generally don't seem to like each other is not my call to make.
I just believe if you're going to object to the things that do get concerned people into action by ranking issues, then you better take it deep.
Update: I got a bit dispersed on this one but Oliver responded in the comments and I think I got clearer in my response, though I ultimately refuse the necessity of having a central point!
Odd Development: The second post by Oliver Wang linked to in the next line above has been removed and he's updated his earlier post. That's really odd because the follow up post that he's removed was more more convincing than the first and included actual blogger field work.
In his he reveals that he has since discovered via one of the initiators of the campaign that there was good reason to get upset when white shoe industry folks couldn't understand why anyone would find the image offensive.
Now here's why I wish I'd saved the Africa discussion for a separate post, since it connected way too much, too quickly for most readers. Oliver makes the following argument that is precisely what I've raised around hip hop bloggers who present racist, sexist and homophobic material as humor (and get love from OW for doing it):
My original post above was really about two different issues. One was to ask, what's the big deal?
and I now understand better why this shoe would rankle so many people - it's bringing out all this latent racism by dumb asses who think it's cool/cute to rock a buck-toothed Chinaman on their shoe as well as shoe execs who can't understand why Asian Americans might be upset. Just to make things worse, the people who are paid to know better, i.e.
staff at Nike/Adidsas, might be able to defend the shoe on the merits of artistic freedom but instead, their main response has been, man, these Orientals sure are sensitive. If that's not enough to make you want to lace up some steel-toes and go ass whooping around Portland and Beaverton, I don't know what is. When hip hop bloggers make humorous fucked up comments, the sophisticated readers may get the supposed joke, but when you read the comments section, any intelligent reader should recognize that such blogging is bringing out all this latent racism by dumb asses who think it's But, whatever.
It was my mistake for wasting valuable ProHipHop time on this topic in this way. I can only offer my apologies for also wasting my readers' time.
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