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Young jeezy my president is black t-shirts11/11/2022 ![]() Jeezy realized how rampant the bootlegging had become during an August trip to the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas with Jay Z, where he saw “30 different booths” selling various Snowman shirts. Some added bandanas and guns to the original design, others came in different colorways. Knockoff versions of the cotton shirts began popping up at streetwear stores around the country. ![]() I remember Shawn ‘Pecas’ telling me, ‘Can you make a black-on-black for Kanye?’”Īs Jizzle’s notoriety grew, so did bootlegging. You had to be someone special to have the one with the glitter on it. “We decided to print it with some glitter-it took off from there,” says Rivera, who estimates printing up to 30,000 shirts for Def Jam. The shirts were featured more prominently via Jeezy’s own “ And Then What” video in June and later in Juelz Santana’s “ Make It Work For You” visual, except these tees gained glitter and an expressionless mouth, like a bespeckled angry emoji. And he wasn’t subtle about his trademark, rapping, “Get it? Jeezy the Snowman / I’m iced out, plus I got that snow, man.” He sported a black T-shirt with the triple screen-printed Snowman logo in Gucci Mane’s “Icy” video, which dropped in April. Either way, it wasn’t enough, especially after Jeezy began wearing them in music videos and during appearances. Rivera recalls starting with about 100 Jeezy says it was more like 1,000. ![]() The shirts’ first production run was small. “But everything we did as a whole-meaning myself, Ashaunna, Jeezy, Def Jam-we created this T-shirt and the proportions and everything was right.” “We could have put a tiny Snowman on the shirts or on the back,” says Rivera, who compares the design’s brilliant simplicity to the Apple logo. We were like, ‘We need something that’s as big and as notable as the phone number.’ That was my personal marketing goal: How do we beat Mike Jones?”Īyars sent her simple sketch to Eif Rivera-now a video director for Drake, Kanye West, and yes, Jeezy too-to have it blown up and printed on shirts, which would be sold and distributed guerrilla style. “ had the phone number on his shirts-that was his campaign. “When thinking of new creative ideas to take him outside of Atlanta and grow his visibility, I just drew that snowman with a pen on a piece of paper,” she tells Genius. Former Def Jam marketing director Ashaunna Ayars says she got involved around the same time, in early 2005. He realized most of his followers couldn’t afford a chain, but T-shirts with the same silhouette were more accessible. ![]() He sported the piece on the cover of his Trap Or Die mixtape, which dropped in January 2005, and “Snowman” quickly became his calling card, due to his past dealing cocaine, or “snow.” “When I started wearing it I automatically saw how people was looking at that shit in the club like, ‘What the fuck?’ As the music was getting bigger, people were calling me Snowman more than they were calling me Jeezy.” “I took him about $150,000, maybe $200,000, like, ‘Yo, I want this snowman medallion.’” Jeezy remembers. It was all part of an elaborate campaign to promote the street-anointed breakout star of Puff Daddy’s group Boyz N Da Hood, then seeking solo mainstream success with his debut Def Jam LP Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101.Īccording to Jeezy, that campaign started with a trip to his jeweler. Jeezy flipped a diamond-encrusted chain and a sketch drawing into one of hip-hop’s most controversial fashion statements.īack in 2005, when Jeezy was still sporting “Young” in his name, the upstart Atlanta rapper set himself apart by slapping a huge, scowling snowman-eyebrows slanted, straight line for a mouth, glitter-frosted-onto a T-shirt. ![]()
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