DJ Clark Kent has passed away, and the sneaker community mourns.

We're going to talk about his legacy this time on Fire Footwear.

Welcome back to Fire Footwear, everybody.

As always, I'm your host, Matt Frates, and I hope that this finds you well.

I do want to thank everybody for their patience in keeping with this content in case it can't be heard from the sound of my voice.

I'm going through quite a bit in my personal life.

My parents are 77 years old, and as you age in life, things happen.

And unfortunately, I've been up in Massachusetts, I live in Virginia, and I've been up helping my dad out because, honestly, he really can't take care of himself.

So this has been a very trying time, and it has really thrown off my release cadence as it relates to the show and the other content that I do.

And so I do apologize for that.

But I do want to say thank you to everybody who has reached out, everybody who has sent kind words, because it means the world to me, and it is great to know that the sneaker community and the Fire footwear community is still behind me, despite the fact that the content hasn't been as fruitful as it normally is.

But we're here to talk about DJ Clark Kemp.

And a couple weeks ago, I think it was three weeks ago now, DJ Clark Kemp passed away at the age of 58, and his passing has many in the sneaker community talking about his legacy.

And legacy is very, very important in life.

As we get to the end of life and as we get older, I think we start to think about what kind of a legacy do we have?

And in the sneaker world and in sneaker culture, I think legacy is very important as well, because we like to put labels on people.

A few weeks ago, I did an episode about Nigo, and I talked about how he was probably on a lot of people's Mount Rushmores, and that's about legacy.

And really, legacy for DJ Clark Kent is complicated, not in a bad way, but because I think his legacy has had such an impact on the sneaker community that it's not easy to talk about in one fell swoop, but we're going to try anyway.

Here's the thing about sneakers.

Hip hop and sneakers have really had a longstanding history dating way back to the 1970s, and sneakers are a lot older than Jordan brand.

I think a lot of people who are newer to the culture because Jordans have been around for so long and because Jordans are so prevalent in the culture, Now, I think a lot of people don't know that before Jordan brand, there was a rich history of sneakers.

They just looked a little bit different.

Pumas, Adidas, Asics, things like that.

Things that are actually big now.

So it really has come full circle.

But artists started wearing sneakers as self expression.

And I'm talking about hip hop artists focusing a lot on Adidas and a Puma and a Converse.

All of this was pre Jordan era, of course.

In 1986 though, a lot of things changed.

And that was when Run DMC was credited with really bringing sneakers into the hip hop spotlight.

Their song My Adidas sparked their deal with Adidas.

And that was the first time that a hip hop artist was partnering with a sneaker brand.

Today, those types of collaborations, those types of partnerships are very, very common.

But back in the day, it was not so.

Now enters DJ Clark Kent.

And in the late 90s, going into the 2000s, he started to hit the hip hop scene.

And it was a little after this, I think, that he started to rise to fame.

By this point, you got to think about sneaker culture now, talking about the mid, late 90s, early 2000s.

We're talking 10, 15 years of Jordan brand history.

Now.

Michael Jordan is out of the league or about out of the league at that point.

He at least has passed his prime, past the last stance, past all of the championships.

And Jordan brand is not this burgeoning brand.

It is an established brand.

And I think underneath all of that, the culture is building.

The culture of sneakers is building in a way that while it isn't in the main spotlight the way that it is today, it's something that if you know, you know, and I know that's a very common statement now with younger people, but it is true.

Back in the day, if you were a part of sneakers, you knew, and if you weren't, you just didn't know.

A lot of people saw sneakers as utilitarian.

And even so today, I think a lot of people of a certain age, like my dad, for instance, doesn't understand having sneaker collecting.

So as DJ Clark Kent is rising, his sneaker wearers start to become synonymous with his hip hop style and obviously his hip hop style.

All the gigs that he had, all of the parties that he DJed, things like that, started to become synonymous with himself, and therefore sneakers became synonymous with him.

And that's the way that we know him today.

But he started in music.

But you got to remember, the convergence of hip hop and sneakers was really starting to become prevalent at that time.

And over time, as sneaker culture grew, collecting became more and more popular.

And DJ Clark Kent was really kind of the poster child for collecting in the early days.

And as his collection became more public, I think that the idea of being a collector and really a curator of sneakers and sneaker history became really a pastime.

And a lot of people collect today.

A lot of people collect out of just mass consumerism.

But I think there are a ton of people, and I think of.

I think it's Scott Collard on Instagram, a guy who always posts himself way when he was younger, wearing a lot of these shoes.

And that's really curation of history.

Even though it's his own history, it's still curation of sneaker history, especially Jordan Brandon.

I do love that stuff.

And I think that DJ Clark Kent, in a very public sense, is somebody who is known for sneaker history, sneaker curation.

He really, if you think about it, was one of the first sneaker icons and possibly was the start of the documentation of sneaker history through collecting.

The idea of sneaker culture at its core.

And I think that it's different today, but I think as it was starting and back then, I believe the idea was that you wore sneakers because you wanted to be seen as cooler or more fly than somebody else.

And it was to wear something that was going to get you noticed for better or for worse.

I think that's what it was all about.

And over the years, that has changed.

The trajectory of why people wear sneakers has changed.

You could make the argument that people wear sneakers today because they want clout, but it's clout of a different kind.

It's almost financial clout.

And it's not about being hip, it's not about being fly.

It's really about proving to other people that I have something that you don't and I'm better than you.

And it's a little bit more malicious, I think, underneath than it used to be.

You wanted to walk into school back in the 80s and 90s with the freshest pair of Jordans because you want people to say, oh, my God, I can't believe you have those, because not everybody had Jordans.

They were expensive, and they are expensive today.

But I think that they weren't so mainstream.

Not everybody was able to get Air Jordans.

Nowadays you can just have access to everything.

And there is so many of them now that it's not as special as it once was.

And that's why I say I believe that today people want the clout, and it's not the same as just being sort of hip.

So DJ Clark Kent, through all of his collecting, through all of his sneaker history, one of the things that stood out to me about his message was about authenticity.

And today we think of authenticity as rep versus retail, fake versus retail, things like that.

And authenticity is about that.

And StockX is certainly going through that now, where they really can't prove what an authentic sneaker is.

But that's not really what DJ Clark Kent was talking about.

The idea of authenticity is really at the core of this podcast, or at least is at the core of what I want to be as a content creator.

You should get the most genuine, authentic version of myself.

And I believe that DJ Clark Kent, through this message, was trying to tell people in sneakers to be authentic to who you are.

Hype is always going to be there.

Trends are always going to be there.

And I think far too often we get caught up in the hype.

We get caught up in the trends, and we want to wear things that people are wearing as well, or what the culture says that you should wear.

And really, the best part about sneakers is that there is something for everybody.

And so I think DJ Clark Kent was trying to tell us to be true to yourself, be true to who you are, wear what you like, and really call it a day, because that is the whole point of the culture.

The culture is all about living in it the way that suits you, and that should be enough for you.

I got caught up in getting into the hype and getting into what I thought I should be wearing because I wanted people to look at me and think that I was somebody.

And now, three years on, I don't really care.

I wear what I like, and I love seeing people also wear what they like, hype or not.

There's a lot of people who wear hype shoes.

There's a lot of people who don't wear hype shoes.

And you know what?

We're all doing it our own way, and that's okay.

I think that through this message that DJ Clark Kent started to become not only an icon, but I also think that he became almost like a father figure.

And as father figures age, obviously the younger generation that comes up behind them thinks that they don't know, thinks that they're old.

And yes, DJ Clark Kent, in terms of sneaker culture, is definitely on the older side.

I'm residing somewhere in the middle, probably closer to the older range, but at his age, almost 60 years old, he obviously is getting long in the tooth as it relates to Sneaker culture.

And so therefore, his opinions, his likes, his dislikes are becoming outdated in the eyes of what is now a younger and younger crowd in the culture.

That crowd wants something different.

That crowd wants something more than what we used to have.

It doesn't mean that what used to be was better.

It was just different.

But DJ Clark Kent has become a father figure to a lot of people in the culture that are of a certain age, because we have all kind of come up in it together.

I don't include myself in that category, but I'm just saying there are people in my age bracket or a little bit older who see him as an icon and see him as somebody that they want to emulate in the way of that authenticity that I talked about.

And it's not as if it was just about him wearing shoes.

It wasn't just about him collecting shoes.

He obviously had his hand in on making and designing a lot of shoes.

And we're Talking about the 112 pack, the elephant print, the neon details.

These are iconic.

Now.

You see these types of things all over the place.

But back in the day, that wasn't always the case.

These stand out.

You know who they represent?

Very similar to what Travis got.

Reverse Swoosh.

Now you know what that represents.

But the 112 pack with the Air Force One, the Air Trainer One, the Air Max One, the SB Dunk Low, those were all iconic.

The Air Force One, Black Friday, that's something that is also iconic.

Even non Nike silhouettes, Puma Clydes, Adidas superstars, these are of old silhouettes that were predating Jordan brand.

He was trafficking in those as well.

And while he wasn't directly related to this design, he did not have any input into the design.

I think that his push of the LeBron 8 really helped the South Beach Colorway to become one of possibly the most popular LeBrons of all time.

And so, like Nego, DJ Clark, Ken is an icon, and he possibly could be on the Mount Rushmore as it relates to sneaker specific.

I did talk about Nigo being on the Mount Rushmore, but I think maybe it's more toward the streetwear side.

We're talking about Bape now.

I think DJ Clark Kent, though, is in a different stratosphere, only because of the message that came with him.

He was a very public figure, somebody who was still talking and working with Complex up until his death.

And in death, DJ Clark Kent's legacy will remain as that father figure, and he will continue to be seen as an early influencer.

Of sneaker collecting and curation.

And this podcast, Fire Footwear, much like him, is about history.

I want to keep that history alive because we're continuing to move forward at a rapid pace in this culture.

But I want us always to remember where we started, because it's very important.

The history, while it doesn't need to be revered at all times, you should know it.

You should want to know it, and you should study it.

Because then when something comes out that maybe you think is whack, you can understand what it meant back in the day, and then you can make a choice as to whether you want it or not.

You shouldn't necessarily always want to have things that we had in the past, even Air Jordan retros, the Black Cement 3, which we're going to talk about next week.

You don't have to like them, you don't have to own them, but you should understand where they fit into the culture.

And I think that's very important.

And I think that DJ Clark Kent himself was very integral in making sure that history was a vital part of sneaker culture as we grew older.

And before we get to the end of the episode, let's get to the release of the week.

Release of the week, where I like to highlight a shoe that catches my eye.

It's not always hype.

This one may be borderline, but it's just something that I want you to know about.

Earlier in the episode, I talked about the Air Jordan 3 black cement colorway, and I said that it's something that you don't necessarily have to like, but you should understand and appreciate where it fits into the history.

Well, lucky for you, if you're somebody who likes it, somebody who wants it and does not have a version of this shoe, November 23rd is your day.

There was a shock drop earlier this week, but US$220, it can be yours on the Sneakers app and probably a bunch of other places.

Personally, it's not my favorite air Jordan 3.

It is for a lot of people.

For a lot of people, it is their favorite Air Jordan of all time.

And you know what?

You should go after it.

You should have it, you should wear it, rock it, beat it, whatever it is.

But if that's your shoe, then November 23rd is your date and I want to see you go after it and I want to see you posting and letting me know that you copped it.

What do you think of DJ Clark Kent and how do you feel about his legacy?

Get in touch with me.

The Fire Footwear Hotline is where you can do that.

Area code 202-643-9170.

If you're an Instagram user, I do have a group chat on there for people who have reached out that have found the podcast at FirefootWearPod is the handle to find me there.

If you want to find some reels, you can find me on TikTok, the same username.

We have a YouTube channel where I like to do different things and if you missed last week's or two weeks ago's chat with Chris Chase from Wear Testers, you can find it there.

Fire Footwear sneakers talk.

You want to hit subscribe, like all that good stuff.

I'd love to see you there and I'd love to be putting out new content there because it's another avenue in which I can make Fire Footwear an even larger community.

I hope this finds everybody well, fam.

I hope this finds everybody safe.

I want to thank you again for your patience and I will see you next time.

This is Fire Footwear.

The opinions and viewpoints expressed on Fire Footwear are those of Matt Fraits and his guest and not necessarily those of the Maddie Ice Media Network.

Fire Footwear is exclusively owned by Matt Fraits and is brought to you by the Maddie.