25 Years Later, DMC Recalls "My Adidas"
Before Rocawear, Baby Phat and House of Dereon made the intersection of fashion and hip hop a multi-billion dollar industry, veteran rap duo Run-DMC started the trend with their hit "My Adidas."
25 years after the song's release, DMC reflects of the impact of the iconic track in an interview with MTV News. "It was a song that was about our sneakers, but it was bigger than just talking about how many pairs of sneakers we had," explained DMC. "It came from the place of people would look at the b-boys, the b-girls and go, 'Oh, those are the people that cause all the problems in here.' And, 'Those young people are nothing but troublemakers and those young people don't know nothing.' So they was judging the book by its cover, without seeing what was inside of it."
The impact of the song was evident to the group, DMC said. "It was scary. We was going through Detroit, through Boston, through Chicago, through L.A., through Virginia; every city we went to on the 'Raising Hell' Tour, we would look out the back of the tour bus and everybody had the Adidas [track] suits from head to toe. The Cazals, the hats, the Kangols and they had those Adidas on. You would think we would sit in the back of the bus and go, 'Yo, we gonna get paid!'"
And they did get paid: their ode to the shelltoe scored Run-DMC the first-ever endorsement deal between a music act and an athletic company. Now, in honor of both their timeless track and the classic shoe, Adidas and Run-DMC are bringing it back to the '80s with a limited edition version. Adidas has produced 1,986 pairs of the same shoe Run, DMC and Jam Master Jay wore over two decades ago with special details like the JMJ logo on the heel, "1986" stitched on the side and a gold lace lock designed to look like a dookie-rope gold chain.
Classic hip hop fans should get it while they can…'cause the '80s won't last forever.