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One way to think about the whole Ye-Drake, Donda versus Certified Lover Boy schism was as a glorified merch battle. And now, we've got a merch-involved detente. Though Ye and Drake duked it out all summer and fall, the duo came together on Thursday evening for the “Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert,” an Amazon-sponsored streaming event, to perform hits new and old. It was a night of friendship, and also of gear: Ye and Drake squashed their beef, while Ye and Balenciaga designer Demna (who both recently went mononymous) paired up to make more merch.
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The latter duo were capping off a year of serious collaboration: the Balenciaga creative director (and GQ’s designer of the year) has been outfitting Ye, as well as his estranged wife Kim Kardashian, for much of 2021, partnering through the Donda album cycle to release commemorative and highly covetable wares. This time around, they created a #FreeHoover capsule “engineered by Balenciaga.” Starting Friday and running for 72 hours, customers in the U.S. can purchase via an Amazon Fashion microsite. The collection comprises a $200 hoodie, $100 tee, $160 baseball tee, $60 hat, $360 Squid Game-y jumpsuit, and $400 upcycled jeans. (Lest we forget, Demna’s been putting sans-serif text on old Levi’s since his Vetements days.) All but the hat and jeans come in a baby blue hue, and like other recent Yeezy releases, the drop is for preorder; customers can expect items to be shipped within six to 10 weeks.
(For what it’s worth, the site is visually pretty similar to the Yeezy x Gap webpage—all-caps, black Helvetica Neue Bold on a white background—and the #FreeHoover hoodie does resemble the much-loved Yeezy x Gap hoodie, though it’s unclear if it’s the same make.)
During their performance, the duo and their crew all wore versions of the merch: Drake sported a custom blue hoodie, albeit with a looser, more Yeezy-esque double-sleeve shape; as Pitchfork put it, he characteristically “added his own pinch of patois,” with “Free The Mandem” written on the back. Ye wore his #FreeHoover jeans tucked into boots that looked like his favorite Balenciaga Crocs, revealing a #FreeHoover fleece baseball jersey underneath a denim jacket halfway through.
If seeing Ye and Drake together after years of feuding was a strange sight, so too is the current Amazon Fashion landing page: a stark banner announcing the “YE & DRAKE FREE HOOVER OFFICIAL MERCH” beneath an auto-playing festive fashion vlog from Vanderpump Rules’s Lala Kent. The duo purportedly put aside their differences in part thanks to their shared hopes for clemency for Larry Hoover, the incarcerated former leader of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples However, as Pitchfork noted, there was no mention of Larry Hoover during the broadcast. Following the concert, a rep confirmed to GQ that, as with proceeds from ticket sales for the concert, a portion of merch proceeds went to a number of criminal justice reform groups. After all, if there’s one way to get lots of eyes on something, it’s to place it on a humongous retailer like Amazon. Maybe Ye and Demna will take on the Amazon coat next.
An earlier version of this article stated that a representative for Amazon confirmed that merch sales were not earmarked for charity. The Yeezy team has since followed up to confirm that a portion of the merch proceeds will be donated.
