Category: Hip-Hop

Whether it’s an iconic black-and-white portrait, an official release, or a bootleg collage in rap tee style, wearing a vintage Tupac shirt is repping a legend. For fans of hip-hop, streetwear, and vintage fashion, these shirts are gold. Authentic ’90s Tupac merch goes for hundreds, even thousands of dollars in collector circles. But while a vintage Tupac T-shirt might mean style and status on the streets in the U.S.A., it’s had a very different meaning in parts of Africa, especially during some of the continent’s darker chapters. YouTube/JourneymanPictures Back in the late 1990s, during the peak of Sierra Leone’s brutal ... Read more

Platinum Certification ID: DfnkdPC-001 Collapse All Summary This vintage T-shirt has undergone a meticulous in-person examination by an authenticator (James A.), who has concluded that it is an authentic, deadstock, 1989 De La Soul "3 Feet High and Rising" Glow Promo T-shirt in a Hanes XL size. This garment is in deadstock condition and qualifies for platinum certification status. This T-shirt is in very-fine/near-mint condition. The only flaws appear to be garment construction/print production-based. The front features art by Michael Uman in five colors (with an additional 6th glow-in-the-dark ink). Mase, Posdnuos, and Trugoy the Dove are depicted against a ... Read more

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by defunkd (@defunkd) I got this sweatshirt about 10 years ago in a bundle of vintage clothing from a second-hand clothing mill in the Netherlands. I had no clue what it was, but it seemed promising and of the rap tee genre. This was also amid the tri-blend t-shirt goldrush, where it seemed any print on a tri-blend tee would fetch more money. And this just so happened to be a Russell Athletic tri-blend sweatshirt, so I thought, I could really have something unique here. And I wasn’t wrong. This ... Read more

In fourth grade I had a babysitter named Kelly who would pick me up from school in her maroon cargo van without any back seats. She was probably nineteen or twenty then. She took me and my brother to Baker’s Square once but mainly brought me home from school and waited around until one of my parents got home from work. Kelly had a boyfriend named Jeff, who was six or seven years older than her, by my estimate. He liked the band Danzig but otherwise seemed like a loser. Jeff accompanied Kelly to pick me up more than once, ... Read more

What is Rap Tee Style? Rap tee style can be described as a collage of imagery layered on a background, typically featuring numerous faces. The fonts are typically outlined in white, with a color inside that often has a shading effect on it. Generally, the tees have a wide variety of colors. This style is often used to describe non-hip hop t-shirts, that aren’t technically Rap Tees – like Tiger Woods or even the Back Street Boys. And of course, they are bootlegs, unlicensed merch. Bay Club Bay Club-tagged vintage 1990s t-shirts are extremely valuable in today’s market. They typically ... Read more