It was not until the middle of 2018, when the late Florida rapper’s estate decided to announce the release of the first cool hoodies official XXXTentacion merch. The Instagram Story post mentioned the plague of bootleggers which somehow exploited X’s name and brand to sell their own products.
Despite the fact, this is a free world and as long as there’s creativity in the world, there will always be someone to create a different version of other’s work. Since his death, the lamentation for the rapper has inspired a new burst of tribute T-shirts, hoodies and other pieces of merchandise. Surprisingly, a lot of the bootlegs are actually better than the official clothing lines.
A good amount of the retailers and freelancers who sell merch inspired by XXXTentacion rework his famous album artworks or his signature symbols, e.g. the broken heart symbol, the tree of life tattoo that he had on his forehead or the XXXTentacion Mickey Mouse print from his Revenge tour merch. Some decide to continue the trend of the XXX Mouse and now you can buy online an XXXTentacles, a Squidward Tentacles with the rapper’s black-and-yellow-dreaded hair sweatshirt, hoodie or T-shirt.
The distorted broken heart symbol, along with XXXTentacion branding under it and on both sleeves is a hoodie worth buying. What’s more, it comes in six different colors, including pink. Some designs take ideas even further with an XXXTentacion emoji print on the front – a cat with crossed out eyes, tongue hanging out and a “BAD” branding on the forehead. Another design features a question mark in the form of a heart symbol, to commemorate his “?” album, and a strikethrough “What’s love?” print under it and it looks pretty dope.
However, the most popular designs have to be the ones that feature the Florida’s own face depiction. There are lots of casual designs with photos used as ideas for a front print, but there are also animated and cartoonish ones which immediately grab everyone’s attention with their colorful details. A good choice in this case is the famous XXXTentacion praying print which is very beautiful and can be easily put on a black T-shirt or a hoodie. There are many all-over prints as well.
The most unique design of all is probably the one with X’s head cut in half and a triple X coming out from inbetween. The face is somehow dripping and the late rapper’s eyes are blank white. The graphic looks so unique that some may think that this is an actual piece from one of the official collections. A honorable mention is the distorted XXXTentacion skeleton skull, with the artist’s name printed on both sleeves. The neon-blue print gives a dreamy and chill feel.
To conclude, bootleg merchandise is not necessarily bad, as in this case, some pieces are comparable to the official ones. Some of the graphics made by freelancers are way more creative and original. After all, not everyone can afford to pay an arm and leg for genuine merch and the unofficial XXXTentacion items are bound to satisfy your needs.
