Image via Complex Original
On his 1999 track aptly titled “Sneakers,” Raekwon proclaims that he is a “multi-thousand pair of sneak freak.” While we may have never gotten an exact tally of his collection, he has certainly solidified his status in the footwear world. The rap legend and his Wu-Tang Clan brethren’s largest contribution to the space may be bringing Clarks Wallabees into the lifestyle space throughout the ‘90s. And decades later, his love for sneakers hasn’t wavered. He can still be seen lacing up everything from Adidas EQTs to high-tops from Don C’s Just Don brand on his Instagram page. His biggest moments in the sneaker world in recent years have been his various collaborations with Diadora.
The partnership kicked off in 2015 with the help of Packer Shoes via an N.9000 covered in purple suede that was released by the well-known Teaneck, New Jersey outpost to celebrate the famed “Purple Tape,” the nickname given to Raekwon’s classic debut album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx for its purple cassette. In 2020, Raekwon and the shop rekindled the partnership. This time, a pair of N.9000s was colored up to match the album art of the project and was accompanied by a purple and white Maverick nodding to its 25th anniversary.
For his most recent work with Diadora, Raekwon has chosen to partner with Foot Locker to help foster Community Linx, a program aiming to aid aspiring young musicians via a four-week course complete with advice from Raekwon and figures in the music industry like Dave East and Scram Jones. Of course, there will be sneakers too.
Kicking off on Jan. 27, two pairs of N.9002s will drop for $120 each that nod to New York City, one each made to match the uniforms of the Knicks and the Brooklyn Nets. Raekwon’s signature text logo appears stamped on each heel as well.
“When I think of New York, I think of the Knicks, the Nets. These colors, from a sports perspective and me growing up being a big fan of the Knicks, I felt like they resonated with the city,” Raekwon tells Complex. “People know me for wearing loud colors and just being flavorful. I call it being flavorful. I just felt like these colors resonated with what I wanted it to be. I wanted people to feel that excitement when they threw a pair of sneakers on.”
Subsequent releases will arrive throughout the year taking cues from other major cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston.
Ahead of the inaugural release of the Community Linx project, we got a chance to catch up with Raekwon to discuss his latest sneaker collab, his earliest memories of Diadora, his influence on sneakers and fashion, and more.
Can you speak a little bit about this new project you have going on with Diadora and Foot Locker?
Foot Locker and Diadora, I feel like, is part of hip-hop culture and sneakers. Diadora has definitely been a brand that I grew up on and this whole project that we are doing is to empower our community and just give back to these kids in a way where fashion and culture meet. Basically, just give opportunities to these youngsters and make these youngsters have entrepreneurial dreams and visions of doing the things they love to do. So that’s pretty much what we came together for. This was a project that I was deeply impassioned by and I brought the idea to Foot Locker and Diadora. They loved that I was going with it and they wanted to be a part of this journey.
You’ve worked with Diadora on a couple sneaker projects in the past as well. What about the brand makes them such a perfect partner for what you want to do?
They became perfect partners ‘cause they were the ones that were a part of my vision when I made my own collab sneaker with them, the “Purple Tapes.” I did a collaboration situation with Packer. This is a guy who I knew for a long time that basically allowed my vision to come to fruition. And Diadora was right there to support us. They believed in what we can do. Creative wise, they basically was like, “Yo, we love what y’all do. Rae is a icon in the fashion world, the sneaker world. He’s always been a guy that has been known for being fly, setting trends.” We’ve been doing this since back in the ‘90s, wearing different things that people looked at to follow that trend. I’ve been really rocking stuff from silk shirts to fly sweatsuits to suede jackets to footwear, so I pretty much made a name for myself inside the game as being one of those fashionable guys that created what you see today. You see a lot of these kids now fascinated with color, making colorful sneakers, doing what they doing, and also just being involved with the fashion world itself.
I feel like fashion and hip-hop connect with one another. It’s a part of the same tree in my eyes. We was always taught that if you feel good, you look good, you become greater. I feel like my existence in the rap game and the music business is to open that door even wider for people all over the world to love fashion. You gotta also remember, coming from the group that I came from, we started messing with clothes and doing things, and for a while pretty much was looked at as trailblazers in the fashion world when we came out with Wu Wear clothing and stuff like that. We pretty much opened the doors for guys today to do what they love to do. All of this came from a thought that we had when we came up in the ‘90s. They always looked at us as a team. Every team always had its own uniforms. So, “uniform” became the word for “gear” for us. This is how you’re going to become a part of us. Follow this trend that we are doing and become great and see the greatness in you because it starts from you wanting to be fly and you wanting to be creative and be a designer within yourself. We pretty much opened up doors for people to do it.
I remember seeing Roc-A-Fella doing it based on what they seen us do and what we seen Phat Farm do and what we seen Naughty by Nature do. We all was around the same time of doing things when it came to fashion. I watched these companies become multimillion dollar companies that not only became million dollar companies, but also helped other companies become even bigger based on our philosophy. So to me, that’s inspiring. I’m honored that people would even look at me to be one of these kinda guys that is a trailblazer to that universe. It’s just all about sharing the wealth and everything else that comes with it.
I wanna take it back real quick. Do you remember the first time you saw someone rocking a pair of Diadoras growing up?
Oh man, absolutely. I could take you back to my block. It’s like the mid ‘80s, the early ‘90s. Diadora always had a name in my community. I tell people all the time, back then when we was wearing them, you had these brands that was doing they thing at the time. You had Lotto, Etonic, Nike, Saucony, you had all different kinds of brands that we was in love with they footwear. It was like, “Oh, snap, that’s a tennis shoe. Oh, snap, that’s a basketball shoe.” We always was trying to get fly back then. And dudes in my neighborhood would have Diadoras on. And, you know, just the name alone. I was like, “Yo, how do you pronounce that?” It was something that was different and dope and dudes in my community would rock them with Kangols and good denim jeans on. Some guys would rock ‘em with sweatsuits back then. Even when we was looking at hip-hop, we was watching what these guys were wearing, a lot of sweatsuit action, a lot of jewelry. And my community was into the same shit. They was getting fly like that, the older guys. So we would pay attention to what they were wearing and the brands that they were rocking because everything wasn’t always Gucci and Nike, it was all kinds of things. Prince, I don’t know if people are familiar with that brand of sneakers.
It was just all about expression. That’s how we expressed ourselves, not only wearing names that people were familiar with, but also watching guys come out and try different shit on and bring different shit to the table. And Diadora, it stood out. You see one guy come through the neighborhood and he had Diadoras on that was dope, it would make another dude that was gettin’ money cop a pair. Next thing you know, you got 25 dudes in the neighborhood wearing the same kind of sneaker. We paid attention to that. We paid attention to who was the fly guys, who was the motivation in the community.
You talk about being inspired by the people you were surrounded by growing up. Wu-Tang was able to inspire a whole generation with what you decided to wear. Some of those things were Wallabees and Timbs, which became huge trends in the ‘90s and still are today. Are there any sneaker trends or anything you feel like you guys set that you may get the same credit for?
Like I said, we don’t always look for credibility when it comes to things that we do. It’s all about just growing up as a kid and enhancing the next youngsters to look at it the same way we looked at it, ‘cause it was all a motivation thing to become fly. I would really say Clarks was something that I know for a fact that we opened up that door because Clarks was a British shoe and a lot of guys didn’t really know the comfortability of those kind of shoes at that time. Me and Ghost would go nuts with it. We would change the colors because sometimes we wanted different colors, but they only came in a certain amount of colors. And once we started to go to places that knew how to dye shoes we would become creative again.
It’s like growing up in your community seeing the OG with a Lee suit on and next thing you know he got Chinese letters of his name going down the side of the leg. It was always about being innovative and creative. And that’s what we were doing because that’s how we were raised. It became a trend to us in our community. So when we started to do it, we didn’t realize we was opening the door, but we did realize it because at that time people had their eyes on Wu-Tang and we was changing the game in such a way where nobody ever seen this happen before.
Even with Timbs, we would wear Timbs with shorts, typical shit that probably a lot of people wouldn’t have done. They wouldn’t have probably put on Timbs with shorts, but when you are in the hood and this is how you feel and you wake up that day like, “Yo, I’m putting on Timbs with some shorts. It’s hotter than fuck outside, but I’m gonna rock these brand-new Timbs.” It was a style for us in the community. We wasn’t realizing that we was opening doors, but we felt like we had taste, we had style.
And I definitely became one of those guys in the community that loved to wear these type of brands. Same for Ghost. When we got enough money to go shopping and do things, we would flip gear and just do things our way. Eventually that became something that people emulated. That’s what it was. But Clarks is definitely something that nobody would ever front on us with. We pushed Clarks to another level. You had West Indians wearing them, but we was the ones that pretty much pushed it all the way out there to the communities and it did very well when we spoke on ‘em.
A big part of what you are doing with Diadora and Foot Locker is Community Linx. You get to use your platform to help up and coming musicians and creatives in the city. As a veteran of hip-hop, why is that important for you to provide your ear and your insight? ‘Cause not everyone has that mindset.
It was important to me because, like I said, the first thing that every kid idolizes is clothing. And clothing then excites inspiration. Growing up and seeing Foot Locker do they thing for so long, and of course Diadora, I felt like they were pillars inside the game that could help these kids further their imaginations when it comes to being creative and going to live out their dreams. Your first thing that you may really love as a kid is when your mother comes home and brings you your first pair of sneakers. All kids love sneakers, even adults, we all love sneakers. It’s something that it does to us that makes us feel good.
We watch guys like Jordan magnify his star-studded career based on the footwear thing. So, it was all about empowering people based off of something that became so legendary in our communities, which was footwear. I felt like this collaboration would only make kids be more motivated to live out their dreams and do things. This is why Community Linx was created as a project to present to Foot Locker and Diadora based on the fact that we knew how much footwear meant so much to the communities. Sometimes even when I go back home, little kids, that’s 10, 11 years old, they come and they say what’s up, but they also looking you up and down what he wearing, what he got on, what kind of jacket is that? That describes success to them. You always paid attention. The first thing we ever did when we was kids was look at what that person had on their feet. If that person had a brand new pair speakers on, that was a car to us back then. That was a way of saying he’s doing something good. You seen a person with a fucked up pair of sneakers on, you didn’t believe a word he said at that time. To make a long story short, the motivation of Community Linx is to uplift kids and adults to be the best that they want to be in any field that they feel they may wanna be based off the fact that you have these iconic brands such as myself, Foot Locker, and Diadora to help our communities grow in all genres of shit that they love to do. We know how important it is because we know the value of what sneakers did to the community to create men such as myself in the game to be great.
Are you able to speak on anything you might be working on right now musically? Do you still have that drive as an artist yourself or is it more about cultivating that next generation for you at this point? What is your focus in that field right now?
I’m always motivated to make music and that’s always going to be something that I’m gonna stay in love with. But when you almost 30 years in the business, of course your mind fluctuates into other things. I think right now for me, it’s just to become more of a business mogul guy, as well as a great artist. I’m just trying to show people the balance of relevance. This is how you keep yourself relevant, doing the things you love to do on top of becoming a greater businessman and following trends that not only myself is doing, but other peers as well. We motivate each other. When I see a guy like Jay Z or I see a guy like Puff doing things that’s just astronomical, it’s just inspiring. So I think that’s just the plan, just to continue to do what we love, music, entertaining, and just giving these kids some kind of motivation.
Music is always gonna be there. I’m always gonna be dope and I’m always gonna continue to give people great, classic albums, cause that’s what I do. I do bodies of work. So anytime The Chef is coming, you know you gonna have something special on top of everything else that he is dreaming to get done and accomplished. It’s all in one spectrum for me, just to continue to be great and do everything I wanna do. You might not hear music from me right now, but you’re going to feel my presence. It’s something that music helped create. And that’s what it’s all about.