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When Kanye West attempts to address high fashion’s avoidance of hip-hop, his message sometimes gets lost in the delivery. Labeled as rants by others, we prefer to think of them as fits of passion, but maybe T.I.’s take on the matter will help the issue be understood loud and clear.

It’s easy to forget that T.I. also owns a fashion brand, AKOO, but that’s because he purposefully decided not to align his image too closely with it in order “for the garments to speak for themselves.” Hypebeast recently sat down with the Atlanta rapper to chat about the line, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, and he opened up about some of the frustrations he feels from the tension between hip-hop and the fashion industry.

On the negative criticism musicians receive for branching out into fashion:

“Oh, I don’t care nothing about that. You know, it’s the same thing they said about Southern people when they entered the hip-hop industry. And look at what we have been able to do for so long consistently. People been telling me what I wasn’t supposed to be doing for a long time and I’m still here doing it. I’m not really tripping on what other people’s opinions are. I’m more so concerned off of what the consumers opinion is.”

On higher-end designer brands’ disassociation with hip-hop: 

“I think they will do it as long as we allow them to. As long as we continue to promote their shit. As long as we continue to buy their shit. The power of the urban market is in the dollar. Black people spend like nobody’s business. We are the most spending race I think there is. You can have a black man that makes $14,000 or $15,000 dollars a year, and you can have an Asian, or a Latin, a Mexican, or a Caucasian who makes $14,000 a year. That black man is going to spend way more money on Gucci or Louis or Jordans or AKOO. He is going to spend way more money on those luxury or fashionable items than any of these other races combined. You see what I’m saying? Where they look away and disrespect our contributions to their bottom line, the only way we will receive that respect is if we enforce our power, here in the dollar. ‘Alright cool, so if you don’t want to rock with us, guess what we going to do, we’ll stop buying.’ That means from $14,000 a year to $450,000 a year, we’re not buying. But until we do that they will continue to manipulate us and they will continue to take us for granted.”

And there you have it. It doesn’t get much more lucid than that–but is high fashion ready to pay attention yet?

SOURCE: Hypebeast

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