It was a lazy pandemic Sunday evening on November 29, 2020. Looking to kill time I get on clubhouse, and to my delight I see a room titled “Giving Wale His Flowers.” The topic at hand is one that has been discussed many times before. Wale is the most underappreciated rapper who belongs in the top 10 rappers of all time. That’s not what this article is about; during this clubhouse conversation, the topic turned to Wale’s fashion influence. A member of the audience shared a personal story about Wale’s influence on him which inspired this article. But before I tell that story, let’s go back to November 13, 2020. A collaboration between Nike SBs, Travis Scott, and PS5 was announced. Twitter user @VividDope quote retweeted a tweet announcing the collaboration saying “At this point…Wale should’ve had a shoe with Nike,” and this is 100% true. Now back to the clubhouse story, the audience member told us how he had left the DMV to join the army around 2007. While stationed in Asia, the only way he was able to keep up with pop culture was through magazines, and blogs. While skimming through the latest edition of Dime magazine, he saw an Ad for LRG featuring Wale in a pair of Eggplant foamposites. Although the point of the ad was to promote LRG clothing, it was the shoes that caught his attention. A few months later, off the strength of that ad he purchased himself a pair of eggplants. This story made me think “Hmm let’s put an estimated dollar value on Wale’s influence on sneaker culture.” To calculate this, we’ll be making use of Youtube views, DMV population statistics, the earnings report from Nike, and blog articles from that time. Even with these credible information sources, I believe whatever number we arrive at will still be a gross underestimate of Wale’s true value to the sneaker game.

“Flyer than the rest of them, flyer than the rest of them, flyer than the rest of them, still got my Nike Boots,” Wale rapped on his hit single ‘Nike Boots’. This song simultaneously propelled Wale and the shoe by Nike to new heights. On youtube the music video which was uploaded in 2009, has about 2.5 million views. If 1% of those views worldwide decided to purchase a pair of Nike boots because of that song, that would equal $3.75M dollars in sale (25,000*$150 per pair). According to Nike’s 2009 earnings report on their website, revenue for that year was $19.2B. Footwear revenue for that year went up by 5% in the US. But enough about the numbers, let’s put that 25,000 consumers figure into something you can imagine. Prince Georges and DC combined have a population of around 300,000 people between the ages 15–34 (source PG & DC health sites). That means 1 in every 10 people (25/300) you walked past had a pair of Nike Boots on. If you lived in the DMV in this era, 1 out of every 10 people sounds too low. You couldn’t go to the mall, or school, and not feel like everyone had a pair. The Nike boots weren’t the only shoe the DMV made hot, which brings us to the foamposites.

The Nike Foamposite known as the ‘foams’ was a DMV staple for footwear, and Wale was made the unofficial spokesperson by Nike. The hype around these shoes got so crazy nationwide that someone traded his car in exchange for a pair of the very rare Galaxy foams. One pair of Galaxy foams had an eBay bidding war that hit $70,000, yeah, you read that right, $70K for a pair of shoes. On the release date a riot broke out at an Orlando mall which led to over 100 cops showing up in riot gear to break it up. When Wale wore those eggplants foamposites in that LRG Ad, the seed for the Galaxy foams hype was planted. The LRG Ad mentioned by my guy from the Clubhouse was on every major blog, Complex, Coolkicks, Solecollector, etc. This undeniably played a role in Nike making Wale the unofficial spokesperson of foamposites. In 2011, they gave Wale a pair of Pine Green foams seven months ahead of the release date. This lead to a Pine Green foamposite frenzy since nobody beside Wale had a pair, and there was no release information on them. That wasn’t the first time Nike had used Wale to debut an upcoming foamposite release, but it was the most notorious one. NiceKicks even wrote an article titled ‘Foam Home: Wale’s Eight Best Foamposite Debuts’ Which chronicled dates and locations where Wale wore unreleased pairs of foamposites. The foamposite hype didn’t last too long though because Nike got lost in the sauce and released too many colorways making them too available, thus causing foams to become played out. But before their demise, using the population figures from before where 1 out of every 10 persons from the 15–34 age range in the DMV had a pair of foamposites, this translates to $5M in revenue from 25K pairs of foamposites sold. This brings our total to $8.75M in shoe sales generated by the one-man Nike marketing department named Wale. This figure doesn’t include his SB influence or Jordan which were left out to not to complicate things. But based on these Nike Boot and foamposite figures, $10M seems like a good starting point estimate. That’s without touching the resale market and companies that have been created as a result of that era.

So, what do we do with this information? Well, if you’re Wale you might want to start being a lot more intentional with who you’re generating business for through your lyrics and every day fashion choices. It appears Wale is aware of this already though, since he made a song titled “Sue Me” which talks about splurging on black owned businesses like Pyer Moss instead of blowing money on the usual luxury brands that disrespect Black consumers. Perhaps that’s the solution, maybe a Wale x Pyer Moss shoe is on the way, maybe we will see Wale team up with Somewhere In America Collective on a sneaker. A lot of money was left on Nike’s table by Wale; that’s a fact. Part of me wonders if Wale even had access to the table at all. We could demand Nike make it right by giving Wale his own shoe deal comparable to the amount of business he generated in the past. Or we could take things into our own hands as his supporters and if that Pyer Moss or Somewhere In America Collective collaboration happens, we show up and show out.