The Sneaker Savant

That first @raekwon x @diadoraofficial N.9000 collab (purple pair) came out right around the same day that the Yeezy 350 Pirate Blacks came out...back in like 2015 or so. I remember this because...when that Yeezy 350 dropped on the Adidas site, I wasted a great deal of time trying to cop. No luck. So I went on over to eBay and copped the Diadora as a consolation prize.

For the most part, the second @raekwon x @diadoralifestyle N.9000 collab (red/black/yellow pair) was thought to be a friends and family release. Something that wasn’t going to hit the public...and...if it were...it were going to be in pointless quantities (ie: too small).

Last night I got the email from Packer that the second collab was going to be releasing through their site the first thing in the morning. I don’t really try for most new releases, but I wanted to try for this one.

At 7:56 AM I remembered that they were about to drop, jumped out of bed, opened up @spotify and clicked on ‘This is Raekwon’. ‘Incarcerated Scarfaces’ started playing.

I navigated over to @packer and hit that refresh button every 10 seconds or so until the first pair popped up. As soon as I saw it, I hit my size, ‘Add to Cart’, then started the process…First thing to pop up was the bot check… “Let’s connect, politic _______” I started singing it through my head and as soon as I did, I realized the same exact line was playing through the speaker. “Ditto”. I copped with relative ease. I even had time to run and grab my wallet cuz PayPal was down.

As soon as I copped, I went on over to the “Diadora Talk” forums and was checking the release thread - a bunch of people were stumped on the ‘Let’s connect…’ line. 😆 Goddam that must’ve been frustrating.

Anyway, glad I got that release. And happy they threw that loop in there. Not sure I woulda made it through if it weren’t for that line tho. If it were a @travisscott line I most assuredly wouldn’t have gotten through 😂