Cacs ruined Nike. Retro J’s and Nike’s crossed over and became too mainstream since around the bandemic. All of those resale stores run by cacs. All of these corny hypebeast influencers on social media are cacs. And they came out of nowhere in the late 2010’s. nikkas switched over to designer because no one wants cacs to dress better than them. nikkas switching to designer caused drip inflation. A $230 Jordan 11 is no longer murder worthy when nikkas getting robbed for $1000+ Balenci’s, Dior’s and Louis.
Black people kept Nike in business for decades. White people were not copping retro’s in the 2000’s. White people mostly stopped wearing J’s in the early 90’s after Vanilla Ice got exposed as Malibu’s Most Wanted and Kurt Cobain gave cacs a lane to wear dirty Chucks, dirty ripped jeans and dirty flannels.
But now, the mainstream treated retro J’s and Nike’s like a trend. It’s like if classic albums like Illmatic and Doggystyle went viral and started charting with white people and nonblacks everywhere out of the blue in 2021. By the time it was 2025, these same white folks would be saying Illmatic was some old 2021 shyt. Even though that shyt is classic for people that grew up on it. OG sneakerheads like myself see no problem with classic J’s sitting and being easy to cop. I needed to reup on my shyt like Black and Cement 3’s and will reup on shyt I need that I had multiple times and dogged out like Flu Games, Aqua 8’s, Air Max 95 neons and Cement 4’s next year. I don’t care if they trending or not. My childhood will never be played out.
But outsiders who tried to gatekeep the culture see a problem with Nike grails becoming easy cops because they can no longer profit as much off it. And Nike also made classic grails more accessible to kill reseller hypebeast culture. I see no problem with this either. There is no reason a sneaker made in a sweatshop should resell or retail for a thousand dollars. You can’t buy sauce. But swaggerless cacs and nonblacks thought they could price black people out of swag with resale culture but reps came through and crushed the buildings. Now it’s a slow return back to the essence.