Juggling college and the multiple branches of HaveAir can get pretty hectic, so this isn’t the rollout I hoped for. With that being said, I’d like to introduce a new series we’ll be doing titled Behind the Paint. When I first started HaveAir sneaker customizing was still pretty low-key, so there were few resources available to new customizers, and established artists didn’t share much information or content outside of their final products. My goal with Behind the Paint is to provide a more detailed look at both past and future projects by sharing how they came about, the thought/design process that went into them, and more.

Today’s Behind the Paint comes with a story and is in a different format than most will be due to my limited amount of in-progress content for these shoes. A “sports” podcast by the name of Flagrant 2, which is now one of the top 5 Patreon creators in the world, first landed on my radar back in 2017. At the time, I frequently listened to a different podcast called Brilliant Idiots hosted by comedian Andrew Schulz and The Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne Tha God. That’s how I learned that Schulz was also on another podcast called Flagrant 2 that he co-hosted with his friends comedian Akaash Singh and sports journalist Kazeem Famuyide. I first looked into Flagrant 2 after a collab episode they did with Brilliant Idiots and have been hooked every Tuesday and Friday since.

Fast-forward to 2019. I was experimenting with different stenciling methods (this was before I invested in a vinyl cutter) so I decided to take the 2 in Flagrant 2’s logo and make a stencil out of it. First I traced the logo onto a piece of paper. Then I took an unfinished pair of custom Nike Air Force 180s that just happened to be in the same red, black, and white colors as Flagrant 2’s logo and I placed multiple layers of tape onto the toe box of each shoe. After that, I traced the paper logo onto the tape and proceeded to cut it out with a knife. Next, I brush-painted a few layers of black until I had a solid color and finished off by removing the stencil once the paint had dried. The logo came out perfectly and actually made the shoes look complete. 

Before I added the Flagrant 2 twist to the shoes they had spent a couple of years laying around collecting dust since I had stopped customizing for my first year and a half or so of college. I was fully booked and had no other custom ideas, so I figured I’d see if the Flagrant 2 crew would want them. I slid up in Kaz’s DMs to ask and he happened to like them and proceeded to shoot me an address that I could send them to. As you can see towards the end of the Behind the Paint video, I packed them up in a custom HaveAir box and shipped them off.

I didn’t ask for anything in return. I was (and still am) just a big fan and figured they would enjoy the shoes more than I would. Since I had worn them twice a couple of years earlier to test the effectiveness of some custom shoe prep techniques, I included a note saying that the shoes were more of a display piece and could be more prone to cracking than my normal custom work. This was early December 2019, and at the time I had absolutely no idea that Andrew had bought a new studio that Flagrant 2 was moving into…. So in January 2020 when they dropped their second episode in the new studio and I saw the Flagrant 2 customs on the wall in the center of their set, my jaw dropped. I wasn’t expecting it, hadn’t asked for it (again, I sent the shoes over before the new studio had been announced), and was completely mind blown.

It’s been more than a year since this happened now and I’m still extremely grateful and proud. I just haven’t mentioned this yet since I didn’t want to seem like I was clout chasing or thirsty for attention. So that’s the story behind the Flagrant 2 Nike Air Force 180s and one of the most unexpected, but pleasant surprises of my career. Moving forward, the majority of Behind the Paint posts will focus on the sneaker customization process, and every now and then I’ll share a story like this… Maybe I’ll even talk about my 2015 White House shoes at some point. Thank you for all the support and be on the lookout for future Behind the Paint posts! 

Taking flight soon…