Here are even more reasons why hip-hop and hoops overlap. The almost endless styles of early to mid nineties hip-hop music coincidentally overlaps with the Nike renaissance of the same period. The Golden Age of Nike (1994-1998) featured some of the most memorable shoes and shoe marketing of our lifetime. Ironically, this period was marked by a huge spike in price as they began to balloon past the century mark. This isn't to say that Nike's were cheap prior.
Yet, something must be said about 1994. I did an online search not to long ago about Nike shoes of the 1990s and here is an unofficial list of the basketball shoes released in the decade. The pair I would like to highlight today are the Nike Air Go L(ight)W(eight)P(erformance), my first pair of non-Mervyns Nikes.
(courtesy of www.pickyourshoes.com)
These shoes were, obviously, light weight. They also featured those annoying "speed laces" that for some reason never stayed tight and tied. I think one of the things that stood out, too, about this shoe was how low your foot was to the floor. My cuts on the court never looked so clean, you would have thought I was Jerry Rice out there on the hardwood. Unfortunately, Light Weight Performance also seemed to have meant no durability. Those shoes could not sustain the wear and tear of the blacktop; these shoes were raggedy within months. Then again, I was actually exercising daily, so maybe that has something to do with it.
This interesting design, however, seemed like an aberration in the 1990s with its lack of the identifiable swoosh across the broad side of the shoe. Oddly, it hasn't been "retro-ed" but neither have many other classics from this era. Given all the hot shoes released throughout the nineties, how does the NIKE GO LWP compare with the rest?
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