The story behind rapper Wale’s journey to headlining the Nike G.T. Future

HILLCREST HEIGHTS, Md. — On the coldest of Saturday afternoons, about 25 minutes from the nation’s capital, a crowd of people pulled up to Foot Locker in support of a local legend who made it out of the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area — better known as the “DMV.”

Hundreds arrived for the exclusive Dec. 13 drop of the “Ice” Nike G.T. Future, a new basketball sneaker, releasing in a special-edition colorway inspired and designed by Grammy Award-nominated rapper Wale, a lifelong sneakerhead.

Two decades after working retail day jobs to get his music career off the ground in the DMV, the Nigerian-American emcee returned home to unveil his latest collaboration with Nike. The momentous event also extended the victory lap he’s experienced since the mid-November rollout of his eighth studio album, everything is a lot., to widespread praise. 

Wale’s biggest sneaker project to date didn’t disappoint, either.

“It’s an honor to be a part of the release of a brand-new shoe,” Wale told Andscape. “Everything I do is inspired by where I’m from and creating colorful moments. So, I appreciate Nike for letting us cook and infusing our culture in it.”

To tease, launch and promote Nike Basketball’s latest silhouette, the global footwear company behind it both unconventionally and strategically tapped a rapper to headline the shoe’s push to the culture, and Wale attracted a large crowd for the new Nike G.T. Future.

Fans, awaiting the 1 p.m. drop of the “Ice” G.T. Future, stood in below-freezing temperatures for a chance to cop the super-limited shoe, highlighted by insoles and a hang tag stamped with the rapper’s signature “Wale” logo — spelled in sneaker laces. According to Wale’s PR team, about 2,500 pairs were released across all Foot Lockers, led by two primary locations in Harlem, New York, and a Maryland mall, where the rapper made an in-store appearance.

“I’m looking for the person who knows exactly when Wale is gonna get here,” said a Nike marketing rep inside, while the store’s manager rallied more than two dozen referee-uniformed sales associates, and a FedEx deliveryman cut past security, rolling product boxes to the stockroom. Outside, the line wrapped the building and spilled into the street, backdropped by the shopping center’s rusted Iverson Mall sign.

At 2:24 p.m., three black Cadillac Escalades motorcaded into the parking lot, and out hopped D.C.’s de facto mayor, head to toe in a navy Boreas Nike Tech sweatsuit with the hoodie’s built-in ski mask raised. After dropping the hood to free his face and a head full of dreads, Wale must’ve dapped up a hundred hands before making his way inside to a table with a stack of promotional posters featuring a portrait of himself laced in his very own “Ice” G.T. Future.

On the first poster he signed, Wale scribbled a personal message and handed it to Pierre Edwards, the creative director behind “The Second Coming” ad campaign and commercial, released to market the “Ice” G.T. Future colorway the rapper and his trusted team have spent a little more than a year designing and finalizing.

“We’ve been a part of the full journey of the G.T. Future,” Edwards told Andscape. “It’s been beautiful to work with the Nike Basketball creative team, who were really genuine about Wale being involved with this shoe.”

The 100-second spot mirrors the opening scene of the timeless “Game Day” episode from the first season of HBO’s acclaimed Baltimore-set series, The Wire. It features Wale, alongside his cousin and actor Gbenga Akinnagbe, who starred in the original series, as well as Anthony Brown Jr., Washington, D.C.’s No.1-ranked high school basketball player in the 2026 class.

“Bringing the campaign home was always the goal,” Wale told Andscape. “My team came up with the idea to pay homage to The Wire ‘Game Day’ episode, and we just let it flow from there. There are so many DMV nuggets across media, like the show, that people don’t really know about. Our aim is to zoom in and platform the DMV.”

Paced with music from the song “Michael Fredo,” a track on everything is a lot., “The Second Coming” ad opens with Wale showing up at a D.C. gym to scout Brown and other up-and-coming area basketball players.

“Everything we touch, we try to mirror Wale’s energy, his music and how layered, thoughtful and maniacal he is in creating,” Edwards told Andscape. “We shot in the Thurgood Marshall Center, the first Black-owned YMCA in D.C. Also, everybody in the commercial is homegrown — both young men and women — from the area.

“For us, everything has to be big. Why not? Wale is a gem, who’s important to multiple layers of culture — from the DMV, to sneakers, fashion and music. So everything we touch, including this shoe, we try to knock it out of the park.”

The commercial’s marquee moment depicts Wale asking Brown how he can help. And, of course, the high school star requests a pair of the rapper’s new “Ice” G.T. Future basketball shoes.

“At the end of the day, this is a performance model from Nike Basketball, and we have such a rich basketball history in the DMV,” Wale told Andscape. “I wanted to highlight that.”

During the Foot Locker in-store appearance, Kazz Laidlaw, Wale’s manager — who executive-produced both the ad campaign and the commercial — shared the larger purpose of the visuals looping on a projector screen behind the table where the rapper autographed his new shoes purchased by fans.

“We made the first-ever commercial for the Nike G.T. Future shoe,” Laidlaw told Andscape.

Wale selflessly stretched the significance even further, assuring he shouted out every young DMV player featured in the campaign.

“We had Ant Brown, who I’m sure will be an NBA first-round draft pick one day, and to say we got to work with him in his first sneaker commercial is a special moment,” Wale told Andscape. “There were so many other young stars in the piece, too, like Jezelle Banks, LaBrea Carter, Seyon Harsley, Mekhi Polk, Jafet Valencia, and Jasiah Cannady — all future stars. This shoe is the G.T. Future. We had to show the future of basketball in the DMV.”

So, how exactly did a sneakerhead rapper become the headliner of a Nike Basketball shoe?

Honestly, it’s been a really long time coming for Wale to get his just due with Nike. The DMV rapper has been shouting out Swoosh shoes in his rap lyrics — literally — since the opening track of the first project he ever released.

About 20 years ago, around 2005, Wale dropped his debut, a 22-track mixtape, Paint A Picture, featuring an illustrated cover with the correct pronunciation of his stage name — “wale (wah-lay) — a shortened version of the full name, Olubowale Victor Akintimehin, given to him by his Nigerian immigrant parents.

Forty seconds into Paint of Picture’s intro, “Wale Revere,” the young emcee, then about 20 years old, spits: “Excessively spend cheddar on jeans, shoes and everything / A fetish for Dunk SBs / Those sneakers that people who don’t see me on the weekly, I be in ’em!”

“Sneakers have always been a part of Wale’s brand,” Laidlaw, a fellow DMV native, told Andscape. “Early when he was making music, but before he really became Wale, he worked at DTLR [Downtown Locker Room] in P.G. Plaza Mall. That’s where he started handing out mixtapes. And people in this area knew who he was — that he worked at the shoe store, and that he rapped.”

In 2007, Wale dropped “Nike Boots,” an ode to the sneaker-inspired Nike Air Max Goadome silhouette that became a staple shoe in the DMV during the early 2000s. The music video for “Nike Boots” — the DMV rapper’s final track as an independent artist before he signed a major record deal — reached MTV, putting Wale on the map in music nationally, and on the radar of the Beaverton, Oregon-based brand as a cultural tastemaker.

Nike swiftly pinpointed Wale to unveil a new colorway of the iconic Nike Air Foamposite One — former NBA star Penny Hardaway’s 1997 signature shoe, which the DMV also adopted as its own stalwart sneaker. In 2008, Wale debuted the “Eggplant” Foamposites in a print ad for the clothing brand LRG, setting the stage for Nike to host the rapper for a headlining concert in New York City, where the brand also unveiled his special-edition, co-branded shoe.

Many forget that the “Flyer Than The Rest of ’Em” Air Max Foamdome — an exclusive mashup model of Foams and Nike Boots, made on behalf of Wale and limited to just 95 friends and family pairs — marked the rapper’s first collaboration with the brand in 2008. Yet, for some reason, he and Nike never officially partnered back then. By February 2018, a frustratedly determined Wale, on a whim, started an Instagram Live from his Maryland home, showing off his extensive collection of Nike and Air Jordan shoes that could challenge any rival celebrity or rapper sneakerhead.

“When is Nike gonna play fair, man?” Wale said on IG Live. “Just call me. … Call me. They giving everybody else deals and s—.”

From late 2023 to early 2024, Wale reignited his sneaker status by rotating through a collection of NBA star Anthony Edwards’ debut signature shoe — the Adidas AE1 — in social media posts. Wale, importantly, illustrated his natural ability, birthed in the DMV, to rock basketball sneakers off court. He got so many fits off in the AE 1s that he received unfiltered appreciation from the Minnesota Timberwolves star: “First n—a to rock my s—, man!”

Eventually, about a year ago, Wale earned the full attention of Dawn Baxter, a longtime music marketing executive at Nike. In April 2024, Baxter became the brand’s global director of entertainment and celebrity partnerships.

At last, Wale got a call from Nike. 

The rapper teamed with the brand to headline the “DMV Cherry Blossom” Foamposite One. The collaboration’s accompanying ad campaign was inspired by the trees and flowers that bloom every spring in D.C.

In the 42-second commercial, directed by Pierre Edwards for a super-limited August 2024 release, Wale debuted a new song, titled “Ghetto Speak,” with lyrics that hit hard like a spoken-word poem about his hometown city: “… Broken glass, cherry blossoms and bullet fragments don’t look as fantastic on a pamphlet.”

Online sneaker media outlet Nice Kicks named the Wale-headlined DMV Cherry Blossom Foamposite a 2024 Sneaker of the Year, under the “Best Theme” category, as voted on by a panel of 100 footwear enthusiasts.

Following the success of the rapper’s first headlining Nike collaboration and campaign to hit retail, the brand presented Wale and Edwards with the opportunity to design a friends and family run of Air Max Goadome boots, 17 years after the Foamdomes, to tease the release of his next album.

So, while recording everything is a lot., and working on a full-circle dream boot design, Wale stopped in Portland, Oregon, for a show on his 2024 “Every Blue Moon” tour. Nike invited him to visit the company’s global headquarters. The rapper and his team toured the brand’s Department of Nike Archives building, where they were shown sneakers dating back to the 1980s.

That day, for the first time, Wale saw the Nike G.T. Future shoe that would become the next iteration of the brand’s “Greater Than” series of basketball sneakers, which launched in 2021 and has produced a new model every year since.

“I’m pretty sure we were the first people, outside of Nike employees, to see the G.T. Future,” Laidlaw told Andscape, before pulling up photos on his iPhone from the visit on Oct. 21, 2024. The Nike Basketball team showed Wale the latest version of the G.T. Future silhouette, which looked like a time-traveling mutation of the ’97 Foamposite, ’99 Nike Flightposite, and 2001’s Nike Hyperflight. Even better: Swoosh reps gave Wale, who wears a sample size-9 shoe, the go-ahead to lace up the G.T. Future right then and there.

“It was an interesting shoe,” Wale told Andscape. “Nike let me try on the black and metallic pair. They were cool, and definitely had lineage to Foams and Flightposites, which I liked. Immediately, though, we told them they needed a color that could pop on court — that made people watching at home go, ‘What are those?‘ when they see a player dunk on somebody on national TV.”

The following day, on the Notes app of his phone, Laidlaw drafted a DMV-inspired concept for an ad campaign to promote the upcoming shoe. Then, over the next three months, Wale and his team went back and forth with Nike, steering the design of the G.T. Future’s first handful of colorways — including his own.

“We had been in dialogue with Nike for a while about how we could do more to elevate Wale’s partnership,” Laidlaw told Andscape. “When we met and they showed us this new model, we thought it was a cool shoe. Our conversation led to that first orange colorway. Then Nike said, ‘Hey, we want you to do a moment during NBA All-Star Weekend.’ We were like, ‘Bet.’ Wale had three sample pairs of G.T. Futures and was deciding his fit in the car on the way. So, the moment was as organic as it felt.”

At 2025 All-Star Weekend in the Bay Area, Wale became the first person spotted and photographed wearing the Nike G.T. Future. The nation’s top high school basketball player, AJ Dybansta, debuted the G.T. Future on court in the brand’s Future Game showcase. Dybansta, who signed an NIL deal with Nike in January, wore an all-black model, while Wale rocked a bright-orange colorway.

As soon as the rapper and basketball phenom unveiled the new shoe, it caught the eye of sneaker enthusiasts across social media for its modern silhouette, which paradoxically transported them back to the golden age of Nike Basketball from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

By July, Nike officially announced the G.T. Future in a press release, specifically shouting out Wale and Dybansta for starting the hype surrounding the silhouette they’ve teamed up to headline.

“I don’t want to say I have anything to do with the hype,” Wale said with a smile in a November interview with Complex.

Following a pre-release in August during Nike’s annual NY vs. NY basketball tournament, the “Fire” edition Wale debuted in February became the first colorway to hit retail in limited quantities on Oct. 25. The “Ice Blue” edition came next, with one important design detail separating Wale’s collaboration from the other three orange, yellow and metallic silver lead colorways.

“The iridescent Swoosh was our idea,” Laidlaw told Andscape.  “At first, Nike showed us samples that had matte-colored checks, but we wanted to pull something, like iridescence, from Foams and Flightposites, to make it pop. That was a cool element that got added toward the later stage of the design process.”

A week before the G.T. Future’s first widespread release of the silver pair on Dec. 20, the shoe Wale has spent the entire year working on with Nike arrived in his hometown area and sold out within hours. After the in-store appearance ended, Laidlaw thought his artist had dipped out, only to look up and see Wale still dapping up people who came to Foot Locker in appreciation.

“It’s cool, 20 years removed from Wale working at stores when he just started making music, that he can still be in the community, connect the dots generationally, and create moments by iterating on a new sneaker model,” Laidlaw told Andscape. “I think the G.T. Future will be considered a DMV shoe now, since the nexus of the campaign is here.”

The sneaker purist in Wale, though, won’t allow him to prematurely anoint the G.T. Future. He knows there is still work to do in selling it to the culture.

“This isn’t a staple shoe — yet,” Wale told Andscape. “It’s a bold design that hasn’t worked already, like a Foamposite or an Air Max. You have to experiment to see what people like.”

Yet, the pride the DMV rapper has in his partnership now as an official Nike pitchman is palpable. For Wale, it’s an opportunity that’s been decades in the making.

“This is definitely one of my top 5 sneaker moments,” Wale told Andscape. “But we’ve got more on the way.”

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