"It All Falls Down"

The LeBron X

When I graduated from college years ago I initially went to work for R. H. Macy’s & Co.  in their Executive Training Program. At that time it was known as the Harvard of retail, was privately owned and very very exclusive. In hood terms the joint was crazy expensive bruh! My first retail floor training came in the domestics department. Now keep in mind I grew up in Gary, In. so I wasn’t familiar with people spending that type of bread on anything let alone bedding. Cats were paying $350 for a single down pillow and another $400 on sheets. When I moved over to train in women's designer the Adrienne Vittadini skirts were going for $10K alone and that was more than 20 years ago. However,nobody was outside protesting that the joint was too expensive. 

So why is everybody up in arms about Nike charging cats $315 for a pair of the new LeBron X shoes that will be released this fall? There always have been and always will be products sold that are ridiculously expensive or overpriced, if you will. Just because they’re for sale doesn’t mean that you’re obligated to buy them. The more expensive a product is the more exclusive the product SHOULD be. That means if you really don't have the bread to afford it don't buy it. 

They’ve been selling Louis Vitton  bags for years that can cost upwards of $20K or more and Range Rovers that can run a boy more than 100 stacks if you’re pushing the Supercharged joint. Can you buy a purse or an SUV at a cheaper price? Sure you can just like sneakers!

Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1^st! Folks that really can afford to buy those shoes won’t be the ones in line trying to get them because they've got more sense. Y’all know that the line wrapped around the mall at 2:30am will be full of boyz that are living pay check to pay check or clowns that have traded an entire month of the EBT card. C’mon bruh! Y’all know how the streets work when it comes to food stamps. Boyz have been selling them 2 for 1 out here for years. For example, if the shoes cost $315 it’s really gonna cost you $630 in stamps and while you playin' add another $150 to that for the outfit bruh. You know these boyz can't get the shoes without the flat bib, the $15 socks, shirt and pants to match. Quit playin’ because y’all know I’m keepin’ it real!

So now within 24 hours that same kid that stood in line for 6 hours is going to be barefoot AND hungry because some cat IS going to take them joints off of his feet on the way to or from school. That’s real talk! So why mortgage a whole months worth of groceries for 6 hours of pleasure with the shoe on your child's feet because during the other 18 hours they were sitting on the Nike box on the side of his bed?

Is it Nike’s fault that cats are willing to spend all of their bread on a pair of sneakers that are going to get stepped on just like a pair of $26 Chucks? Don’t trip on Nike for making money because every apparel company in the world is doing it because they're in business to make a profit. I wear suits 6 days a week, Monday through Friday for work and then on Sunday for church. They sell $1,200 to $2,000 Hugo Boss, Armani and Brooks Brothers joints all day long.  However, I never spend more than $100 on a suit because it doesn’t make sense to spend that type of bread to look good.  I always tell boyz that it ain’t in the suit it’s in the tailor. Remember that! I can make a cheap suit look like a $2,000 joint.

Folks have to learn how to stay in their lanes. Running out and buying the next big thing is keeping boyz in the projects or at the very least with a project mentality. Cats will show up with some $315 sneakers and can't put gas in the ride or can't pay rent. Some parents will buy them and haven't paid their kid's book rental. These cats are straight up on some Kanye West  "It All Falls Down" with that "Then I spent 400 bucks on this, just to be like you ain't up on this!"

Now from what I understand this particular version of the shoe will have sensors in it that will give you the ability to measure how high you can jump among other things. Listen up pimpin’, if you need a shoe to tell you how high you’re jumping then you’re not jumping high enough! LeBron nor any other NBA player ever needed a shoe to tell them if they were jumping high enough so don’t fall for the oakey doke.

I just hope LeBron doesn’t follow in Jordan’s footsteps and not speak out on the violence when it breaks out because it’s gonna happen. Do I blame MJ for the chaos when his shoes come out? Absolutely not! However, I do believe that he should speak out against the violence when it happens because boyz are killing each other over something that has his name on it. He should at least act like he cares bruh and I would expect Lebron to step up too! Don't pull a JoePa on us and stick your head in the sand and act like these kids don’t matter. It's already obvious that their parents don't care because if they did they wouldn't be buying them. They may as well strap a raw piece of meat to their backs and put them in a lions den. 

Holla At Ya Boy!

Jay Graves

Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport