Rap and sneakers go together better than peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin and even french fries and ketchup. There have been songs about shoes for a long time but is started around the 80’s. For this story about the collaboration, I made a playlist of songs that all pay homage to sneaker culture.
Run-DMC’s song “My Adidas” was really the song that started it all. Run-DMC was payed 1 million dollars in 1986 for their song and at the time that was unheard of. It was the first rap song used to advertise shoes and the first ever million dollar endorsement a rap group had ever received.
Jordans didn’t come out until 85′ so for the rest of the 80’s they struggled to fight Adidas’ influence.
In the 90’s once Jordan started to catch up, Sports Illustrated released a magazine titled “Your Sneakers or Your Life” which followed the case of a 15 year old boy murdered for his Jordans along with many other cases of crime similar.
This cut almost all rap and sneaker deals for years. No company wanted to endorse anything that wasn’t squeaky clean. Although the endorsements stopped, sneaker references did not. Hip-Hop has never cared what anyone thought and suddenly it was a lot more taboo to talk about sneakers so that’s what they did.
The 2000’s were the year of the Air Force One. Every shoe wanted to be it. Most shoe designs this decade were low-tops like Reebok who signed Jadakiss and Rakim in 2002. BAPE was also huge his decade. Although it was a huge seller, it eerily resembled the Air Force One lows. Every rapper also had a bar about their outfit which included a basketball jersey, big shorts or bootcut jeans, and Air Force One’s like in Nelly’s song, “Air Force Ones”.
The 2010’s were my favorite year for rapper shoes. It started off with Kanye West’s Yeezy line with Nike. In late 2009, Kanye brought everyone out of the Air Force One Era with his shoe, the Air Yeezy. These crushed the market before 2012 when he released the Air Yeezy 2. The 2’s now go for easily over $4,000. He switched to Adidas and made the Yeezy Boost 350 in 2016. These were so popular, not only does every single colorway sell for around $1,500, he’s released close to 20 different Yeezy shoes and since then and they ALL sell out. From there, Drake got his own line of Jordans. Travis Scott now produces with Nike and has had multiple shoes in the last 2 years.
Kickolls 