Business Of HYPE: Shirt

Business of HYPE is a weekly series brought to you by HYPEBEAST Radio and hosted by jeffstaple. It’s a show about creatives, brand-builders and entrepreneurs and the realities behind the dreams they’ve built. Jeff links up with the maker of things, Shirt, to discuss the rapper’s origins, navigating the music industry, parlaying a master’s degree and so much more.

Once a Staple intern-turned-Reed Space employee, Shirt has long been an artist’s artist, taking whimsical ideas and transforming them into calculated experiments. His most recent and maybe most mainstream accomplishment came with the release of his debut album, Pure Beauty, on Jack White’s Nashville-based record label, Third Man; however his streetwear mashup of Nike and adidas turned Shirt into a budding figure in the realms of fashion and art. When Jeff brings up the “genius” project, as he puts it, Shirt responds in a way that sums up his career thus far: “No one had ever put the logos, as is, next to each other, and I felt that’s a T-shirt that has to exist. I’m going to do it.”