Merch me

November 8, 2019

Watch: Boy Bye by Brockhampton

If Brockhampton is a party (which it is, they have like 15 members) then this beat is its soundtrack—  every one of the band’s producers contributed to “Boy Bye,” every vocalist raps over it, and incredibly, they are all totally locked in. The video starts out with the boys goofing on the basketball court but eventually devolves into a hastily cut-and-pasted green screen situation, with members awkwardly superimposed on fantastical backgrounds. It’s super amateur on purpose, which ends up feeling pretty sexy—you know, ugly-on-purpose vibes. Watch & listen here.

Bootleg Kanye

Anybody seen Kanye’s Jesus Is King merch? In short: it’s ugly. Not just Yeezy-neutrals ugly. Like, clip-art-on-sweatshirt, how-are-you-selling-this-for-money ugly. Of course, this being Kanye, there’s a reason that is not half bad. Ye has been in the limited-release fashion game for a minute now and naturally, a strong set of knockoffs follows in his wake. A lot of the time, imitation show merch looks pretty janky because it’s made with a combination of Microsoft Paint and Zazzle or whatever. But it’s developed its own genre of streetwear cool even so: limited-edition bootlegs still sell for plenty outside shows and on Depop (better fake merch than no merch, right?), and then they develop into their own prestige items, effectively carving out a new area of the streetwear marketplace. In the same way that ticket reselling has become its own business, bootleg design is becoming a legit venture and some independent designers have even gone on to work directly with fashion houses. So this is Kanye reclaiming cool with knockoff-aesthetic originals. Don’t think he’d let a cultural moment pass him by.

Merch, you say?

The BBC reports that the kid who most famously put “Ok Boomer” on a sweatshirt has already made $25,000. In heartwarming news, she’s an art student, so while she does us all a service in codifying generational resentment she’s also making some early cash on her dreams. According to recent interviews, she and the others making Boomer merch will of course be putting that money toward student loans, health insurance, and all the other basic life services the generation in question has robbed from the youth going forward. What poetry.

We said merch.

Dayna Evans at GQ brings up a good point: we should all be making our own limited-edition merch for our birthday parties and whatever. What differentiates “merch” from a tee shirt you’d get at a family reunion or company picnic in the ’90s? Your youthful wit, of course. Load it with inside jokes and make only a few and you’ve got a physical relic of your friendship that lasts a lifetime (or at least however long you can keep a tee shirt alive). Does every other college bro still start a tee shirt company? If not, we’re about to come back around.

OK!

Margot

 

PS Bonus track today: Fat Tony’s “Godly” and its video. Note the thematic parallels.