Shoes

## Single by Lupe Fiasco and Kaelin Ellis, featuring Virgil Abloh

"**Shoes**" is a song by Lupe Fiasco and Kaelin Ellis, featuring Virgil Abloh. It was released as a single on July 15, 2020, and interpolates the 1999 song "How I Get Down" by Rakim. The music video was released to YouTube on July 30, animated by Caleb Clark. The song is an ode to the late Ahmaud Arbery (May 8, 1994-February 23, 2020), who was murdered while jogging in Satilla Shores, Brunswick, Georgia. In the chorus, Abloh sings about hypothetically designing the shoes for Arbery.

## Background

Lupe Fiasco told Apple Music, "It was time spent trying to find the shoes that [Ahmaud Arbery] actually wore. We intentionally, actively spent time looking through the footage, trying to get a sense of what it was without being too macabre about it or being too disrespectful, but to be accurate." Regarding his collaboration with Abloh, Fiasco shared to *Vulture*, "I want to make this song about Ahmaud Arbery, and I want to focus on his shoes and this aspect of him running. What would be the most fitting thing to do? It would be to design a pair of shoes. And who is the best running-shoe designer in the world? Virgil is super-creative, super-forward-thinking, and super-artistic, and so it was easy. We did it before all of that shit [with the donation] jumped off. So it wasn't done to reframe Virgil into 'I'm really a good guy. Look at this song I made about Ahmaud Arbery.'"

When it was addressed of him memorializing people such as Alan Kurdi and Jonylah Watkins through music, he explained, "[T]he only way to give them that opportunity is through the imagination: grow them up and give them purpose through the art. With Ahmaud, it's a little different. He's lived not a full life, but he's already lived to a certain extent. He already expressed the things that he wanted to do and be and experienced some of those things. So it's less about trying to bring him back to life but more about memorializing or amplifying the effects of his death. Some people, you're going to create statues of, name a building after, name a street after; some people, you got to make a pair of shoes. It's the effect that a person can have after their death, not just as an example of racism in America. I would want my legacy to be—which Virgil then kind of put it succinctly—that running is freedom."

## Lyrics

**Lyrics**
[Verse 1: Lupe Fiasco]

Uh, yeah, uh

Been standing in line since Thursday

I heard a rumor they might be dropping them early

Should have 'em just in time for your birthday, irrelevant holiday affair

Got one of those three-leg folding chairs

I am what you call prepared for the campout

Evening brings the battery-powered lamps out

Warm clothes but blanket 'case it get cold

Corn chips and basic staples to hold

Hunger over 'til Uber Eats is ordered

Maybe pizza or quesadillas and sopa

Got a little cooler with assorted waters and sodas

Cinnamon sugar-coated malassada, the odor

Makes me the envy of the line

If not the enemy, not my energy, I'll be spending plenty of time

Inside the books that I bought

Got audios and regulars, quite the party goer and reveler

Uh-huh, uh-huh

[Interlude: Virgil Abloh]

So, on today's to-do list is to design a pair of running shoes

The goal is as always in my work is to add emotion to inanimate objects, so

[Verse 2: Lupe Fiasco]

Uh, release day is finally upon us

More celebratory than the former

But mixed with bittersweet vibes most certainly switched to different beats

More policed than Justinian's Byzantinian Christian beliefs

There's a risen rhythm you can feel it all in the streets

Like a marathon or a parade

Poets might wanna pull they pens out like grenades

Or, or that model for a year and a half

And write down all the tears and the laughs

A shot across the bow of the tyrannous class

Quote from man standing on float

The whole event is just biggest-fan-channeling dope

I mean, one just feels privileged and esteemed

Inwardly serene and spiritually clean

Even the line feels like a team

In stark opposition to a competition for things

[Interlude: Virgil Abloh]

With that, these shoes that we are about to design with words

Starts with a sole

Not a sole, but soul, you know, what touches you to earth

That's floating in nowhere, the soul

[Verse 3: Lupe Fiasco]

Yeah, uh

With touching signs of equality to match

White kid at the front let me go first cause I was black

Said it was only right

He was used to having head starts his entire life

Maybe it was time to step aside like trilobites

Touching, I never forget it like riding bikes

The ordeal starts to spring feelings like guiding light

Permanent villains go about chilling they psychic fights

Nice, and to a buyer's delight

You're limited to two so that means I'm buying them twice

One pair to wear, one pair on ice

Aftermarket speculation will surely hike up the price

Call that all in the plans

Feeling like Mike with the ball in my hands

Swear to God, it's like the best game he ever played

I get to wear the first pair possibly ever made

[Interlude: Virgil Abloh]

What does that sole look like? It's soft to run on

But tough enough to withstand the reality of the ground

Or the reality of the context we're living in, that's the soul

Let's just call it black

[Verse 4: Lupe Fiasco]

Uh, yeah

I get applause as I step outside the pop-up

The shop resembles the unfinished house he was in before they shot us

We fell down, then we got up

Picked Pac up, picked Nip up

This is the type of tripping that scuff kicks up

Traditionally creases was a style to refuse

But now they represent every mile in your shoes

Any mud on your sole gets toweled and removed

It's like I'm retracing every trial, know it took strength

Giant steps flowers growing out of the footprints

Liberation, here's your invitation

It's a relay race, continuation

Get the baton and keep bringing it back

That string theory means we'll keep being attached

Last thing, this is something of a sight

Even when you take 'em off, they keep running for your life

[Outro: Virgil Abloh]

You know, can withstand multiple beatings by the ground

But it's tough enough to continue on, that's the sole

Now there's an upper on top of that sole

The upper is made of leather

Or maybe knit or maybe both, you know?

That sole and that upper combined by stitches

Leaves for a dynamic enclosure around the foot

There's a tongue, there's even shoelaces

You know, those shoelaces, they are literally as elastic as a rubber band

But as tough as links of steel, let's call it chain links

So, here we have the shoe taking shape

There's a logo on the side, fill in the blank with your favorite one

They're all man-made, it's all good

But this shoe, these Air Ahmauds or these Air Arberys

Are starting to take shape now, you know?

They connect man and earth, they allow you to run

That running is freedom, accelerated heart rate by design through design

Air Ahmaud, Air Arbery

What color are these shoes? The upper of these shoes

Maybe white, maybe black, pick your favorite

But, you know, the world's black and white anyways

So might as well limit the whole color palette to that

Signed, Virgil Abloh, in quotes of course

Oh yeah, there's a red zip-tie on this thing, it makes it our own

It's tied into a history of art that's now

Copyright 2020

## References

1. ↑ "Lupe Fiasco - SHOES (feat. Virgil Abloh) ft. Virgil Abloh". *YouTube*. July 30, 2020.
2. ↑ "Lupe Fiasco: 'HOUSE', Possible Nas Collaboration, and Tribute To Ahmaud Arbery | Apple Music". *YouTube*. July 24, 2020.