When hip-hop rediscovered merch

If in the collective imagination the term merch evokes banquets outside the Sports Halls and 100% synthetic shirts, in recent years the same term has begun to get closer and closer to the world of fashion, giving life to a relationship that has seen the center one genre above all: hip-hop. After years of bootleg t-shirts dedicated to Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., the advent of fashion rappers like Kanye West and Drake has rekindled the spark in a relationship that has been dormant for too long.

The merch therefore entered the streetwear world with arrogance, not only for the outfits but also in the mentality and distribution. The banquets have given way to limited drops and in the few cases where someone has taken the trouble to set up a banquet outside their concert he had done it for an epochal event. Ask Kanye and his Sunday Service at Coachella. There, in addition to Ye's artistic weight, another absolute protagonist of the world of merch also found space such as Cactus Plant Flea Market, the brand founded by Cynthia Lu in 2015 and which has become the favorite of the rap world. Pharrell, Kid Cudi, Frank Ocean and Kanye himself are just some of the names who have fallen in love with CPFM's unique design over the years with their embossed prints and handwritten graphics. Pharrell in particular contributed to the dissemination of the work of Cynthia Lu, who before entering fashion had been intern at Complex, wearing the brand during her performance at Super Friday Super Bowl 50 and at the Chanel F / W 2016 show. of CPFM have given birth to a new phase of merch, bringing it further closer to the world of streetwear through one of its worst aspects: the resell.

But once again, Travis Scott thought about messing up the cards on the table, who with his collaboration with McDonald's has once again redefined the idea of ​​the term merch, no longer linked to a musical event by an artist, but become a real and their own business means to branding and expand their portfolios (while ours is getting smaller). To confirm this drift, the commemorative merch also arrived, limited releases dedicated to artists who died prematurely, such as Juice Wrld and Pop Smoke, posthumous protagonists of some tees made by Vlone and immediately became the object of desire of collectors all over the world. . Despite everything, however, the merch remains the symbol of a unique bond between the artist and his fan, a memory of an event or a moment. We talked about it with Erasmo Ciufo, creative director already behind the merch of Sfera Ebbasta and Big Sean, and Samutaro, content curator and leading name in fashion on Instagram, in the third episode of the second season of The SneakerPod, the podcast of nss magazine produced in collaboration with StockX.