There are a few artists who slowly build an entire universe around themselves and go beyond music. This is the case of Westside Gunn.
Over the last decade, he has transformed Griselda from an underground label in Buffalo into one of the most respected names in contemporary hip-hop, but reducing him to "rapper" has never really done him justice. Listen to one of his records, spend five minutes on his Instagram or walk through one of the exhibitions he's put together during Art Basel and it quickly becomes obvious that music is only one part of the equation.
The references never stop.
Professional wrestling, Basquiat, Japanese fashion, Luxury tailoring, records, Virgil Abloh, Maison Margiela and of course... Buffalo.
They all exist in the same conversation, and somehow it never feels forced.
One of the things we've always admired about Westside Gunn is his ability to make people look (or listen, sometimes both) twice.
His albums are full of references that don't necessarily reveal themselves on the first listen. The artwork surrounding every release is treated with the same care as the music itself, and over the years he has become just as known for commissioning painters, photographers and designers as he has for the records that accompany them.
That's probably why this project with Saucony feels so natural.
It doesn't feel like somebody was handed a silhouette and told to "make it artistic." It feels like another piece of Westside Gunn's world.
The Grid Jazz 9 has always been one of Saucony's strongest archive silhouettes. Originally designed as a high-mileage running shoe, it has gradually found a second life outside performance, becoming one of those early-2000s models that feels just as relevant today as it did twenty years ago.
Instead of stripping it back, Gunn does exactly the opposite: the entire upper becomes a canvas: pink, cream, brown and black all somehow manage to coexist without ever feeling chaotic.
Like much of his work, the more time you spend looking at it, the more details begin to emerge.
The packaging deserves just as much attention.
Rather than another oversized collaborative box covered in logos, Saucony and Westside Gunn present the shoe inside what looks more like an object frame than a shoebox. Before you've even opened it, the message is already there.
This isn't something that was designed to disappear into a stack of boxes in the wardrobe...It's something you're expected to keep.
That attention to presentation says a lot about how Gunn approaches everything he creates. Whether it's an album, a vinyl pressing, an exhibition catalogue or now a sneaker, the object itself matters just as much as what's inside.
There is a tendency today to separate culture into neat categories.
Music over here. Fashion over there. Art somewhere else... Westside Gunn has spent years ignoring those boundaries.
He's brought painters into rap, rappers into galleries, wrestling into luxury fashion and Buffalo into conversations usually dominated by New York, Paris or Milan. Somehow, it all makes sense because none of it feels calculated. They're simply the things that have shaped him.
The Saucony collaboration reflects exactly that.
Not because it's covered in artwork, but because it carries the same point of view that has defined everything else he's touched.
The Grid Jazz 9 doesn't pretend to be minimal. It doesn't chase trends or rely on nostalgia alone. Instead, it feels like walking into someone's studio and seeing half-finished canvases leaning against the walls, books piled on tables and records playing quietly in the background.
The shoe is simply another object in that room. And perhaps that's why it works so well.
