The A$AP Rocky Under Armour shoe drops

Under Armour has always been a bit of an odd brand. Like that kid in school that tries too hard to hang with the cool kids, and thus never really makes it. With its roots very much in the soil of American sports, particularly football, Under Armour was founded in 1996 by Kevin Plank, a former captain of the University of Maryland football team. For many UA first came into the public eye through the rather unusual location of Jamie Foxx’s crouch, when the brand was seen on his jockstrap in Oliver Stone’s football movie, Any Given Sunday. United Armour has stayed very much in the sports world, with stints of crossover focus through people like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who to be fair also originally came from sports, and has recently been mostly acquainted with one of the NBA’s most valuable players, Stephen Curry, though the image problem has in many ways persisted. Curry for all of his undeniable, game-changing, talent is a bit of the blossoming nerd of the NBA, with his short stature, good boy attitude, and the fact that his niche, compared to the show time dunks, has become the quite inglorious harvester of big scores, the 3 pointers. Add to that the fact that the shoe designs that have borne his name have all been really quite ghastly, has meant Under Armour, for most, is a brand they don’t own or at least don’t consider fashionable.  

It was thus with some surprise when A$AP Rocky, who is really the opposite of everything UA currently stands for, announced that his first shoe collaboration would be with the outsider brand. This was, of course, the plan for UA, that some of Rocky’s cool would rub off and bring Under Armour to that next level, and admittedly when it was announced, we too started doubting if that nerd with glasses, really was the hottest girl in school when she would take her glasses off and go to the dance with the coolest guy. Alas, this became harder when the shoe design itself was revealed, a skate shoe, which could have worked with the current trend climate and 90’s throwback era, but the design is such a blatant rip off of one of the most iconic skate shoes of all time, the Osiris, that for anyone who is familiar with the design and seen them go by on everyone's feet from Avril Lavigne to Limp Bizkit’s, Fred Durst, it just feels lazy and we’d hoped for so much more from someone like A$AP Rocky.

That all being said yesterday was the day when the shoe was finally released, and it will be very interesting to see how the shoe impacts and shapes the current sneaker climate. We’ve been seeing the seedlings of a possible skate shoe revival boom, and this could very well be the fertilizer that sprouts a full-on trend, or the scorching of the earth that kills it before it even begins. Let us say it how it is, any success the new UA shoe will very much be because of its affiliation to A$AP Rocky, and what the future will bring for the shoe and United Armour will lie in your hands. 

The ASAP Rocky is out today via Under Armour site here and AWGE site here