Adidas + Def Jam T-shirt

Seriously y'all, this might be the Holy Grail of T-shirts for me. It combines so many of the things I love: Adidas sneakers, vinyl records, Hip Hop, and of course T-shirts.

So now you might be asking yourself, "what's the deal here, how's all this connected?" so lemme tell you the story: back in the day, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons founded Def Jam, which turned out some of the most important Hip Hop of the 80's and early 90's, including RUN-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Slick Rick, 3rd Bass, and EPMD. Now at the time, music singles destined for radio airplay came out on 12" vinyl in relatively simple sleeves--as opposed to the more expensive photographic album covers found in retail--and Def Jam had a great iconic logo incorporating a large "DJ" and a turntable tone arm on the sleeve; they was basically screaming, "hey DJ, put me on!"

In 1986, Def Jam artists RUN-DMC put out a song called "My Adidas" extolling the greatness of the Adidas Superstar "shell toe" sneakers--which I've got a closet full of--and thus began a deep connection between Adidas sneakers and hip hop.

This summer, Adidas celebrates their 60th anniversary in collaboration with Def Jam's 25th anniversary, and when they announced the product line I just knew I had to cop this shirt. The 12" single vinyl record design is classic, and then they topped it off with shiny reflective silver ink, silver thread shoulder stitching, and a nice crown logo on the back.

I'm lovin' this shirt.