KING STATUS

Milk is chillin…

“Imagine a Mickey [Mouse] wearing Air Jordans, leaning on a Moët bottle crowned with a dukey rope chain around his neck, dripping in gold and saying your favorite songs hook.” - PHADE TNT TC-5 TFP
Understand the roots of “Street-Wear”; when there were no brands by kids in the culture for kids in the culture, when the most you could hope to do was rock what everybody else rocked with a little more attitude, tilt your Kangol at an extreme angle, sew a permanent crease in your burgundy Lee’s, maybe iron on letters on your cardigan sweaters, graffiti writers started painting custom denim suits, hats, sneakers, whatever.
My man PHADE TNT and his partners NIKE TNT (who helped bring a young kid from his projects called Jay-Z into the game) and KASHEME (R.I.P.) took it to the next level, branding themselves the “SHIRT KINGS” and setting up for business.
In June of 1986, The Shirt Kings opened shop on Jamaica Ave at the Coliseum in Queens. In an excerpt from this interview with Citzen L.A., Phade recalls the initial nervousness;

“The first couple of days, we were twiddling our thumbs, and I just said, ‘Trust me! It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna take one person to see this and its gonna explode!’”
It did.
“Jam Master Jay wore his shirt to the first Def Jam office at 27 Elizabeth St. and Run was like, ‘I need one of those!’

“We created a street buzz and everyone just came down [to the store].”

And they took it all the way to the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, The Arsenio Hall show, The Cosby Show, and EVERY hip-hop video or album cover of the golden era. If you got a little record deal in 86, the first things you copped were your custom Dapper-Dan suit and your Shirt Kings crew neck sweat.

If you have EVER seen a T-shirt design that flipped a line from a hip-hop song, or took a pop culture icon or famous cartoon character and gave him a pistol ,or a gold tooth, or a 40oz, understand that the Shirt Kings gave birth to that. I suspect that if Kasheme hadn’t passed, and Phade didn’t have to do a looong stretch in the Justice, these dudes would be sitting atop an empire that would make Marc Echo envious.

Now it’s 2009 and PHADE is back like a spine. I highly recommend you check his show at Da Bakery in the Bx all month.