Remember  ‘back in the day’  (OK, it was like five years ago) when every rapper had a clothing label, P Diddy, Nelly, LL Cool, even Andre 3000? They quickly realised that clothing labels cost quite a bit of money because they require designers and people with some creative talent, so out went clothing brands and in came the ‘T-Shirt’ lines?  Elizabeth Taiwo breaks it down for us.

Now all you need is a mysterious, yet catchy sounding anagram, a couple of hundred t-shirts, a devoted/naive/hardcore fan base and BAM! You’ve got yourself a million-dollar cash cow on your hands in the space of minutes.

YMCMB

All of the t-shirts have the same 5 letters on them, they didn’t even bother get fancy with the font, yet YMCMB have got their fans.

It probably takes Lil’ Wayne longer to say ‘YoungMoneyCashMoneyBaby” than it did to come up with the design for the range of t-shirts and sweatshirts which start at  £20 and are of course available in a multitude of colors and limited edition designs such as foil print.  Fancy huh?

CMAR

And as always #TEAMUK are not too far behind, Chipmunk has been seen rocking CMAR T-Shirts for the past few months now, apparently the name behind his new record label, ‘Cash Motivations Alwayz Recording’. Chippy has obviously been influenced by Weezy and gang rocking it up in numerous colourways of the shirt, including a rather fancy looking camouflage print one.

But if random capitalized letters in Arial Black don’t float your boat creativity wise, there are actually some artists out there who’ve managed to use software other than Words to create their designs and have come out wit some pretty decent lines. 

STAR IN THE HOOD

Tinchy’s line too started off as a couple of words on a plain t-shirt but managed to differentiate itself from the others by releasing limited edition colourways including glow-in-the dark and rhinestone prints, cause nothing says ‘Hood’ like a Swarovski encrusted t-shirt. SITH has now branched out to hats, jackets, tracksuits, even bean bags and is stocked nationwide in JD Stores as well as in Littllewoods.

DISTURBING LONDON

Having managed to get number one with a song mentioning chocolate biscuits, don’t be surprised if Tinie Tempah is the same guy whose label’s logo is a mug wearing sunglasses. If the Tetley’s-chic didn’t float your boat, there’s also a couple of other designs with skulls thrown in for good measure.

BOY BETTER KNOW

Then there are Boy Better Know’s JME and Skepta who were the first ones on the scene to do the T-shirt thing and do it well, and the mere fact that they’ve managed to make thousands of pounds off the same design for almost 10 years is actually kind of amazing.

FRSH CLOTHING

Probably one of the best MC-based clothing lines out there right now, just because Gfrsh has managed to grasp a basic concept that many of the others haven’t yet (having the same two logos resized, repositioned and re-coloured every couple of months and calling it new is dumb and lazy).  The rapper has actually made an effort to change the fonts and designs more than once a year and managed to do it pretty well.

So what’s the verdict on MC’s clothing lines? Yay or Nay?  Would you walk around with your favourite MCs name/label all over your shirt? 

Star In The Hood - http://www.starinthehood.net/lookbook.html

Disturbing London - https://www.disturbinglondonstore.com/

Frsh Clothing - http://www.gfrsh.com/site/shop/products/clothing/

WORDS: Elizabeth Taiwo