Daniel Mears / The Detroit News
James Wright gets ready to try on a high-top version of the Superstar with help from Pierre Koukoudian, store manager at Foot Locker at the Somerset Collection in Troy.
The iconic Adidas Superstar forged ties between rappers and corporate America
By Mekeisha Madden Toby / The Detroit News
James Wright hadn't even reached double digits when three rappers in black leather jackets and fedoras inspired what would become his lifelong love affair with athletic footwear.
The dudes were Run-DMC and the shoes were a pair of white Adidas with black stripes on the side. The shoemaker calls them Superstars. Everyone else knows them as shell toes for the scalloped rubber cap.
Regardless of the name, it's been 20 years since Run (Joey Simmons) and DMC (Darryl McDaniel) rapped about "My Adidas." But the impact stayed with Wright, now 25, who buys a fresh pair of high-top Adidas Superstars every spring.
"Adidas shell toes will always be in style," says Wright, a phone operator who lives in Pontiac. Wright says he owns more than 90 pairs of sneakers, three of which are the Adidas his one-time rap heroes boasted about being "funky fresh and yes, cold on my feet."
"You always go back to what you know," Wright says. "I outgrew the Run-DMC sound, but I never stopped liking the shoe."
Run-DMC made Adidas its shoe of choice in the 1980s.
"My Adidas" is a simple song about a classic sneaker that helped three guys from Hollis (in Queens, N.Y.), and a Euro-pean shoemaker with a trefoil brand symbol dance into icon status. Today, the group, DJ-less after Jam Master Jay's unsolved 2002 murder, has settled into the role of elder statesmen. And the company, which is coincidentally celebrating the 35th birthday of its Superstar sneaker, continues to enjoy international brand recognition, arguably second only to Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars or "Chucks." Adidas has released a series of shoes to celebrate the milestone, including a pair dedicated to Run-DMC.
The serendipitous two-step between Run-DMC and Adidas proved to not only resonate with hip-hop fans all over the world, but it set into motion a marriage between corporate America and the rap world that still exists today.
Now, companies chomp at the bit to write checks not only for rappers who push tennis shoes, but for those who tell their fans to "shake it like a Polaroid picture" too.
"These days, the youth consumer, particularly in urban America, identifies more with music stars than with sports stars," says Mario Bulgarelli, a buyer for Mr. Alan's. The sportswear retailer is based in Redford and has 11 stores in Michigan and Ohio.
"Fifteen years ago, Michael Jordan and his contemporaries influenced what kids wore on their feet. But they flooded the market. Now a Nelly song can sell more Nikes than even a basketball star like LeBron (James) can."
Like in most tales of trendsetting, the relationship between Run-DMC and Adidas was an accidental one. The rappers just liked the shoes, so they wrote an innocent song about them the same way Prince wrote about a red Corvette and Bruce Springsteen, a Cadillac.
After the song became a hit, Adidas made Run-DMC an endorsement offer they couldn't refuse. But the premeditated marketing motives of today's rap stars was not there, says Orville Hall, U.S. marketing manager for Adidas and a childhood friend of the group's late DJ, whose real name was Jason Mizell.
"Jay was wearing a fedora, a blazer with jeans and shell toes without laces back in junior high when we were in band together," Hall says. "When he joined the group, Russell (Simmons) looked at Jay and said, 'That's your look.' Before Run-DMC, rap stars dressed like rock stars.
"Everybody in Hollis wore shell toes. When Run-DMC raps about standing on '2 Fifth St.' in 'My Adidas,' they're talking about 205th Street and Hollis Avenue where everyone hung out. I don't think Nelly can say that."
What Hall is referring to is the 2002 hit Nelly tune "Air Force Ones" in which the St. Louis rapper talks about his love for the Nike style of sneakers. Soon after, Nelly and the shoemaker signed a deal. Similar deals happened for Outkast after Andre 3000 mentioned Polaroid in the chart-topper "Hey Ya" and Busta Rhymes who recorded an homage to pricey cognac in "Pass the Courvoisier."
On the other hand, "My Adidas" didn't attract the company until one fateful concert a year after the song had been released.
"In 1986, Run-DMC did the (Madison Square) Garden and they had everybody hold up their Adidas in the air," Hall recalls. "All you saw was a sea of sneakers. Then, Adidas got it."
Not even Adidas could have predicted the lasting impact the shell toe would have on hip-hop and popular culture. The Superstar started off in the United States as a basketball shoe, reaching the mainstream a decade later.
Adidas 35th Anniversary Run-DMC Superstar (Hypebeast)
In 1988, the shoemaker introduced the Ultrastar in honor of Run-DMC, a version of the Superstar that had elastic on the tongue, allowing wearers to sport the shoe without laces.
By the 1990s, the Superstar vacillated in and out of commercial popularity, eventually striking a chord with skateboarders. No matter what, the Superstar could always be found in the closets of nostalgic shoe collectors known as sneakerheads. These days, the shell toe is experiencing new life with kids interested in re-creating the retro-vibe.
Rachel Carroll, who co-owns the Burn Rubber Sneaker Boutique in Royal Oak with her husband, is looking forward to nostalgic reaction when the store starts carrying Superstars, which she said will be soon. "I remember my first pair of shell-toe Adidas. I think everyone who had them can," says Carroll, 35. "I was a little tomboy. Mine were white with baby blue stripes. You can't be a shoe collector and not have a pair of shell toes."
Serch, radio personality and shoe aficianado
Carroll must have pulled out a page of Michael Berrin's book. Berrin, better known as Serch, the rapper-turned-host of WJLB-FM 98's "Serch in the AM" morning show, is a huge sneakerhead.
The 37-year-old husband and father says he owns more than 300 pairs of gym shoes, about half a dozen of which are Adidas Superstars. Among them are a collector-enviable pair of black high tops from the 1996 Soccer World Cup games and a set of Jam Master Jay shell toes Adidas released after his death in 2002.
"Shell toes are the hip-hop equivalent of the little black dress," says the New-Yorker-turned-Detroiter. "It's really the one thing anyone and everyone can wear and be stylish, and they go with everything."
Serch has been collecting sneaks for 20 years. He is such a sneakerhead that he's profiled in the 2003 book, "Where'd You Get Those? New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987" (powerHouse Books, $35) by Bobbito Garcia.
And when he talks about his shell toes, he sounds like a Casanova recalling about his first kiss.
"I really got up on shell toes through breakdancing," Serch says. "They were good for moves on your tip toes because of the hard toe. They had great tread and they looked sweet when you were spinning on your head.
"My first pair was $35 and they were white with royal blue stripes. I bought them at Morton's Army and Navy in New York."
For gym-shoe lover Wright, shell toes are a part of a sneaker shopping spring ritual common in Detroit.
Admittedly susceptible to rapper-endorsed shoes, Wright owns a couple pair of S. Carter Reeboks, rapper Jay-Z's line of sneakers, a pair of G-Unit Reeboks and one pair of every color of the Nike Air Force Ones that Nelly pushed.
As styles come and go, shell toes will always have a special place in his heart and his closet.
"Maybe it's because I started wearing them when I was young," Wright ponders. "But I'll never stop wearing shell toes."
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