Matt: A few readers have commented that Big Boi wore suspicious sneakers before in the album insert for Outkast’s CD Speakerboxx.
Dave: You can’t front. The outfit the dude had on was fly as hell, but the shoes weren’t.
Matt: Do you know if there has been any change to the process Sneaker Pimps follows regarding what entertainers wear on stage?
Clark: It’s not their responsibility for Sneaker Pimps to worry about the authenticity of every pair worn into the show. But who are we to say you have to wear this or that. We aren’t in that position. I guess the way you have to look at it is this. If you’re from the hood and stay in the hood, and you start making money, are you still not from the hood? If that’s what you understand, its not all about the money you may or may not have. I mean look at it this way, Rick Ross was seen on MTV showing sneakers that never existed. There have been plenty of known artists who have gone onto Cribs or Its’ the Shoes with fake sneakers and that’s just to say that they didn’t know or that they didn’t care.
See the difference is that our community cares whether a shoe is real or fake, but does that mean that they have to care.
Matt: Do you think that in order to be respected by the sneaker community it is important for that individual to care?
Clark: Let me say this, they probably aren’t looking for respect from this community and this community probably doesn’t matter to them. The sneaker thing matters to us so we love seeing our favorite artists wearing nice sneakers, but it doesn’t have to matter to them.
Dave: This is like the whole thing of having money and being real. Big Boi is a very talented brother music wise and rap wise. His music is real. Sneakers might not have been as important to him as it was to me or definitely to Clark. Take for example Bun [B]. Bun is from a certain area and certain demographic, but he is definitely into sneakers for real.
Clark: I actually had a conversation with Bun and his homie two days after the show. The thing that you have to know is that certain people really care about shoes and some don’t. They look at the colorway of a shoe and just say, “ok, I’m fresh for the night.” They don’t care enough about the rest of the story of the sneaker.
Matt: Do you think that there is a separation between those who want to wear something fresh and what the sneaker community considers fresh?
Clark: I definitely do.
Dave: In my opinion, I think that it comes down to a lack of knowledge. Me being involved with the brands that I am like Nike, Adidas, K-Swiss, Puma, and all them and growing up in the retail setting with those shoes, I was privileged to knowing all the history and info about sneakers. Not everyone has had those opportunities to learn. When we call out those at the shows with the fakes on, the point is really to inform and educate not only the person on stage but also those in the crowd about everything from where to get official shoes, what are official colors of the shoes, and even some trivia about the shoe. We give the knowledge.
Clark: I grew up on being fresh. Somebody might see those sneaks and automatically think about their outfit before they think about the shoe and I think that’s what happens to the average person who puts on a pair of sneakers. They will automatically think, “oh these will match this, this, this, and that, and it will look crazy and no one else will have it” without stopping to think about where those sneakers came from. I think that the sneaker community is much more in tune with the reality of the sneakers than the other dude who is just trying to be fresh. If that was the case, Big Boi probably would have never put them on if he cared about the reality of the shoes and the shoe game. He just cared about being fresh, that’s all.
Dave: Two songs into the show, he stopped and told the crowd about how these were his new sneakers and that they came “fresh out the box.” He was really feeling what he had on.
Clark: He felt that the shoes were part of his fresh. He wasn’t caring if they were real or fake in that moment or the moment that he put them on. They looked ill to him.
Now he had on the matching fitted, and had it all together, but did it really matter to him whether his shoes were real or fake? Probably not, but it definitely matters to the community. There are alot of people who love fresh without loving sneakers.
