Soulja Boy Credits the Air Jordan 13 Flint for Helping Him Create Crank Dat
PublishedQuick Facts
- Soulja Boy says the Jordan 13 Flint helped inspire him to create Crank Dat
- When he was in high school, he wanted a pair but was unable to afford them
- He used that as motivation to get his career in rap going, thus creating the legendary song
- It's interesting he claims the Flint 13s as inspiration as he's always been associated with BAPE shoes
Is Soulja Boy really the first rapper to do (xyz)? In many cases… no, technically not, but he can lay claim to many different firsts in hip-hop. Like the time he shouted out his MySpace handle in the middle of a song, he was a pioneer in the digital marketing space for rappers and artists in general. Or how about being the first rapper to livestream on Twitch’s predecessor Justin.tv? That’s true. What helped fuel his drive and passion to make a career for himself in the rap game and achieve all of these “firsts”? A pair of Air Jordan 13s.
In a recent Instagram video, Soulja Boy documents how instrumental the Air Jordan 13 Flint was to his success. “These is the shoes that made me create ‘Crank That’,” he says. Soulja then tells a story about going to high school in Atlanta and seeing someone wearing a pair of Air Jordan 13s in the Flint colorway. Unfortunately, his mother couldn’t afford a pair, but he understood, and the shoes helped fuel his passion to make it in the world and become a successful rapper.
It’s quite interesting that Soulja Boy is crediting the Air Jordan 13 Flint, which is slated to return later in 2026, for inspiring him. If you were around or are familiar with his style in the mid-2000s, it was almost always BAPE on his feet. The rapper even had a song titled “Bapes,” which featured an addictive chorus: “I got me some Bathing Apes, I got, I got me some Bathing Apes.” He even disses Nike in the first verse, “Check out my Bathing Apes, I'm fresh to death and you like me, Don't try to cop my style man, stick to them Nikes.”
Soulja Boy doesn’t have any official collabs with Nike, Jordan, BAPE, or any of the major footwear brands, but he was crowned as our number one worst hip-hop sneaker collab for his YUMS collab from 2008. Other than that, Soulja has dabbled in the footwear space with the Soulja Stars, and just last week, a new pair of sneakers was released on his website that uses graphics strikingly similar to A Bathing Ape’s design language.
As mentioned above, Jordan Brand will be bringing back the Air Jordan 13 Flint for a retro release later in 2026, and maybe this will inspire the next generation of great hustlers and entrepreneurs to get their money up. While we wait for the AJ 13 Flint to come back, download the Sole Retriever mobile app for real-time updates on the latest happenings in the sneaker world.
2020 Images via Nike
Sneakerhead from South Florida who turned his passion into a career. When not writing for Sole Retriever, I enjoy attending concerts, catching the latest movies, and trying new food. Email: nick@soleretriever.com
