Can Kendrick Lamar Really Bring Reebok Back?

In his own words, Kendrick on his Reebok deal.

by Gerald Flores

The lobby of New York’s Dream Hotel is filled with media. 

TV crews from all the major music networks are in town and they’re queuing up by the hotel bar. The day’s itinerary is running behind schedule, or what the publicists affectionately call “hip-hop time.” But all the reporters and anchors in the the lobby wait it out, just to go up to the presidential suite to get a few minutes with Reebok’s new pitchman — Kendrick Lamar

After about a 30-40 minute delay, Top Dawg Entertainment’s flagship rapper, wearing a green hoodie, torn up jeans, and the Reebok Ventilators that the brand is paying him to front, nestles down in one of the lavish hotel room’s couches to field a few questions about sneakers. 

“Can we turn the music down?” he asks one of several handlers in the room. “It’s hard for me to get away from music. It’s like I’m always writing songs in my head.”

Ironically, the track that K. Dot asks to be turned down is a Jay Z song - one of Reebok’s first partners in hip hop. According to Kendrick, Jay Z’s S. Carter Reebok from a decade ago had a tangential impact on him wanting to expand beyond music.

“If it wasn’t for Jay Z and 50 Cent venturing out and doing these things [10 years ago] it probably wouldn’t be rappers like us doing it today,” Kendrick said. “They stuck their foot out there first and led the way for us being our own entity with brands.”

Reebok, one that’s never been shy to put big bets on musicians and artists, made its deal with Kendrick official last week. In an era in sneakers where every other artist from Kanye West to Tyga are getting some type of sneaker deal, Kendrick was one of the last ones left to not have his likeness attached to a brand, or any other consumer company for that matter.

So why would Kendrick, a big name that gets offered endorsement deals left and right, want to link up with Reebok? 

The brand hasn’t had the best of times. This past year, it dropped the Classic vector logo on new products to focus more on the Crossfit and the UFC, trimmed down to less than a handful of players wearing Reeboks in the NBA, and rumors have been swirling for months about the brand getting sold by its parent company, adidas.

Surprisingly, the rapper says one of the biggest reasons he chose the brand is because Reebok cared less about him selling a ton of sneakers, but more about being able to move a new generation of fans. 

“A lot of times you look at brands stuffing a shoe in your face like, ‘Buy these,’ but with me it’s more of a deeper connection with the community rather than just seeing my face on TV,” Kendrick said.

The rapper’s deal with Reebok was over a year and a half in the making. Kendrick won’t strictly be playing the standard “global ambassador” role in the Reebok’s campaign for the 25th anniversary of the Ventilator next March, but he’ll be designing his own stuff too. But don’t expect to see that any time soon, according to the brand’s vice president Todd Krinsky.

“What we want to do on this project is not only collaborate on product, but inspire people. Most of the conversations that we have together are about how can we do that?” said Krinsky, adding Kendrick-designed Reeboks will probably drop in the back part of 2015. “It’s less about shoes, that’s an important part of the culture and we’re going to do that,  but its like how can we really inspire this generation to do different things.”

Kendrick’s personal end goal for attaching his name to Reebok: elevate the brand’s stature in culture, much like Jay Z and 50 Cent’s lines with the brand did a decade ago. Since the S. Carter and the G-Unit sneaker, there’ve been other entertainer alignments, a lot of which really came to peak for Reebok when Swizz Beatz came on board to become the brand’s creative director in 2010. 

Then there was that whole Rick Ross debacle, where the rapper was signed and dropped by the brand over controversial rap lyrics (Ross still does faithfully rep the brand despite having to publicly cut ties with them).  This is an outcome that Kendrick is well aware of.

“I can’t really speak on what another artist has done. I’m sure they have brought their unique views and lifestyles to the brand,” he said, adding that he’s learned from the missteps of other botched rapper and brand alignments. “We were the kids looking up to what Jay Z and G Unit and others did and the mistakes they may have made in the process of doing that, so we know.”  

Still, Kendrick doesn’t see himself as an ambassador or a designer. He’s just.. Kendrick.

“We are creators and we have become businessmen,” Kendrick said.  “Now we’re putting our own perspective and our own spins on brands I think that’s exactly what’s happening right now.”

Gerald Flores is the Editor-In-Chief of Sole Collector and you can see him Instagram about sneakers here.