Rock The Bells' Drip Hoodie was featured in our inaugural drop to celebrate the home for classic Hip-Hop. The OG design honored the graffiti writers who weren't satisfied with how spray paint came out of the cans. As a result, writers removed stock caps from oven cleaner and put them on spray paint to get a wider spray arc for their “masterpieces." The Fat Cap was born, and graffiti was never the same.
We recently partnered with artist, Najee' Amor, a New York-based artist (and LL COOL J's son), on a reworked version of the Drip Hoodie with drip flourishes that honor his own design sensibilities.
How would you describe what you do?
I consider myself an artist. When I think of graphic design, I think more of people designing on the computer. I started bleaching T-shirts because I don't like anyone's T-shirts. It wasn't anything expensive. I would go to Target and just get graphic tees and bleach them just because I wanted a new fit for the clubs. Something I could do that's different and would stand out. And then I started messing around with fabric dyes. So a black shirt, you add red to the fabric, the bleached parts are going to turn red and the black will stay black. And it just starts to look cool. And I've been doing this for about four years.
It's dope that each bleached piece is kind of one of one
Exactly. I actually say everybody's different, like a fingerprint. There's no hoodie that's going to be exactly the same. Every hoodie you get is going to be different, a different pattern, a different smudge. It could be a different color because you could choose, we can do different colors and whatnot. But every hoodie is original and no one has it.
What do you want people to take away from this specific collaboration?
When I think about Hip-Hop, I think about the streets. Rock The Bells is using the best quality. So it just comes out perfect.