Shortly after A$AP Rocky begins answering my questions about his latest Puma sneaker over Zoom, he shouts an expletive and immediately apologizes. “That was a big-ass bee, bro,” he explains. “It went straight for my forehead.” Lord Pretty Flocko is calling in from somewhere in Europe; the previous night he’d played Belgium and in two days he’ll go live in the Netherlands, both stops on his Don’t Be Dumb world tour. The bee, it feels reasonable to assume, had no idea it had narrowly missed one of the biggest rappers in the game in the midst of something of a career renaissance: critically acclaimed number-one album, one half of a power couple with his superstar partner Rihanna, creative director of Ray-Ban, and Chanel brand ambassador. But today Rocky’s hopped on with GQ to talk about one of his other major endeavors: his partnership with PUMA and their latest work together, a bold new silhouette dubbed the Puma Straycat.
Technically, the Straycat is an update of a fairly obscure Puma shoe from 2005 called the (deep inhale) Ouninpohja Explorador II, a gorpy low-cut hiker with a big shot of sneaker-moc DNA. With his partners at the brand, Rocky freaked it into something weirder and wilder. “I wanted to do a shoe that felt like a trail shoe for hiking, but also had a streetwear feel.” Rocky says of the shoe’s origins, “When people buy sneakers, it’s usually for street visibility, so I wanted something that felt appropriate for that. But then we incorporated the performance sole that makes it practical as well as aesthetic.”
Courtesy of Puma
The new Straycat boasts a bulky sole made from Vibram, a name with serious bona fides in the outdoor space. It’s got exaggerated proportions, plus a complex multi-lacing system designed to wrap around the bottom of the sole near the arch of the foot before being tied up top. Like much of Rocky’s work with Puma, it’s pretty one-of-one, a massive boost of energy for a brand aiming to stand out in an increasingly loud and crowded sneaker space.
Rocky is all too aware of the competition, and he believes there’s much more to the Puma story than most people realize. “For me it’s all about archival revival. I’m obsessed with that. You think about Nike or Adidas, they have a bunch of silhouettes that get brought back now and then for nostalgia, stuff you might have seen in an Eastbay catalog once or twice. Puma has that to offer too, a bunch of sleepers that really didn’t get the recognition they deserved.”
