John Mayer and Jerry Lorenzo Talk Nike Air Fear of God Collab, Kanye West & More | Complex Cover

[Music] this cover represents everything that complex is about kind of converging of two worlds similar but different and it's no coincidence you guys are both wearing your first Nike shoe I want to ask was it your own silho or nothing because only a handful of people get their own silhouette great question I respected the opportunity to work with Nike so much that I was willing not to have the opportunity if I couldn't honor it through my gifts and talents and I went to Nike and I said my gifts are not coloring up anything my gift is in shape and not only do I need my own silhouette I need to fly my last in from Italy it needs to be this shape and like you said hey like we feel like kids just aren't wearing our performance shoes mm-hmm during the day straight up how can we style this I'm like it's not a style thing it's a shape thing you don't mean yeah I can come and fix the shape and you guys have the best designers in the world that can help me do some style but let's get the shape right kind of thing that's why I took so long to happen you've been like two and a half three years since we've been working on it and I think everything is timing man Nike was in a in a place where they were open mm-hmm you know they were open to new ideas and they were open to new perspectives and that opportunity pushed me to do what we did with six collection it's like what am i doing in my own world that is worthy of being able to put something like this and propose something like this to the world and so it's just that living in this humility kind of like we talked about earlier I get to walk onstage and play this song yeah yeah I mean it's not at the end of the day it's not really about me it's not what you are it's what you get to do what you get to do that's the thing John in an earlier conversation you brought up artists creating for themselves verse what the world is asking them to create how do both you guys navigate that type of world I feel like you build this balance of what you're taking in in terms of the overall attitude and then blending it with things that you're sort of finding on your own in your own time so I think I'm always kind of stoking two fires one is what's the aggregate of what's going on in the world and the other ones like what could be a crazy next thing you know what could be what could be a curiosity that people haven't really discovered yet for me it's always been like solutions-based you know I started making clothes cuz I couldn't find what I wanted on the Shelf I made records because I couldn't find what I wanted to hear you can like javasan you stay in tune with what is happening but more in tune with what's missing yeah the fashion fashion has a different relationship with the audience than music does I feel like the audience for fashion understands they're gonna be challenged they like looking at something they don't get yet and I feel like in music we the audience really responds to familiarity and I remember thinking to myself like well if I was a fashion designer you would have just eaten all this stuff up because it's new but I think because of the spiritual aspect of music being something based on a lot of experience and a lot of familiarity you have to fight a little bit to to to to introduce something to people and go no trust me no trust me I don't know I would beg to disagree hell yeah I mean I feel like fashion is like you know it's built on familiarity it takes a high level of conviction and instinct to propose something new and know that people aren't just going to allow it but buy into it and purchase it okay you take two designs and they're exactly the same and they're oversized and they're cut in a really slight ly bizarre way one of them says nothing and the other one says fear of God don't you feel like the audience would look at that the thing that says fear of God and go oh that's pretty cool because they have a innate trust in you as a designer or do you feel like you're starting out from scratch every time and you still have to play by the rules man I feel like I'm start from scratch every time you know I even the six collection and the last time you put a collection I was over a year and a half and I told my team I said if we don't put out six I feel like we'll just fade fade away in the wind like I feel like the the attention span of my audience is only so long and I have to prove myself to that kid every single time and the moment that I start to just put my name on something I think that the weight is in my name and not the idea the proposition that I'm then I'm playing a different game so you want to win the blind taste test every time that's all when I knock you out every time I look no no decision I love it I'm playing to knock you I love it and if I don't knock you out and you don't know that I beat you right right and I didn't like right I didn't put enough into it you know anything you mentioned that we had to go away and earlier you said you either get off the horse or you're thrown off the horse yeah why sometimes do you think you have to go away to come back strong not everybody in fact they'll say nobody can be a good pilot of their behavior and their creativity endlessly successfully hmm you just can't and I've even said to people sort of came back into a pop world and I said I've said to people around me I'm good for four or five more shots and then I'm gonna hand it back to you but I know that for the next three four songs I'm gonna nail it but I've been through this before you just can't be at the center of your phone behavior as the creative director of all your thoughts without saying I'm gonna come to the end of a winning streak here and you have to get off the field for a minute and take a break and watch the world go by it's very difficult for people who are on social media now and I'm not just gonna like beat up social media like a pinata it's too easy to do but there are people who do not understand this the the feeling of going away it feels like dying and there's nobody to tell you to go away because the way your life is built now you're the boss and what you get now is this continual doubling down of everything oh that worked twice as much now oh that worked another twice but I think the double down is happening without the work and I think you can't keep winning if you keep taking yourself out of it i sat in a house for seven months learning Grateful Dead songs and that was arduous and that was a little scary and I put a record on hold and so I was many songs in debt and I was many dollars in debt but I took like seven eight months in satin learned a hundred Grateful Dead songs and my life since then in terms of like return on investment has been insanely beautiful [Music] both you guys quit two years Tuesday for me Oprah both you guys quit drinking on how had I'm three years in November Bria how is that great to in the next Tuesday what effect does that had on both you guys you both quit yeah professionally and personally I mean my family lives better my work lives better I'm able to focus but I don't condemn it I don't think there's anything wrong with it you know I just think that some people can handle it and some people can it's the most personal thing to people it is and I know it's one of the most personal things to people because try talking as someone else about drinking try talking to someone else about how you haven't had a drink for two years and watch what happens to them I don't drink that much anyway and when if I were to tell other people how they could do it it just is so particular to your own spirit in your own psychology that it's almost impossible to develop one way of explaining it to someone else you have to fight really hard to look at it from a critical point of view because it's constantly pushed on you every Friday and Saturday on social media there is enabling going on for drinking when your friend blacks out if he dies he dies and me saying I won't have another drink ten minutes later captures captions yeah um what if I woke up every morning on Friday and Saturday and Sunday and put my feet on the ground and I just went not hungover and then put it on social media everyday you know like that would be an influence to people because I think you forget that's an option and if you look at drinking the way you would look at anything else which is risk reward what am I giving up what am I getting some of the worst odds that ever exists is and I just look at it like I had one night when you get older the yeah man I just went deep one night I remember being like okay what happens if I keep going and it wasn't like dark it wasn't sinister I went I always stop here mmm what if like what if I keep gone it's really kind of like that oddly like playful kind of a thing and then I went oh am i ama I'm dawn did you go though did you keep going listen I have the most amazing last night of my life drinking story it was Drake's 30th birthday party and I made up quite a fool of myself really oh and it took me weeks to stop doing this every morning I woke up and and then I had a conversation with myself and I remember where I was it was like six days into the hangover I was in my sixth day of the hangover that's how big the hangover was I looked out the window and I went okay John what percentage of your potential would you like to have because if you say you'd like 60 and you'd like to spend the other 40% having fun that's fine mm-hmm but but what what percentage of what what is available to you would you like to make happen and there's no wrong answer what is it I went I said aha I wanted oh and then the voice in my head said okay do you know what that means and I went we don't have to talk anymore I get it let's go and that next year I did four tours I was two bands I was happy on airplanes so what happens when you stop drinking the level goes it feels like boredom at first but if you stick with it the line goes the line straightens out and it goes kind of low right you're like oh I'm not having these high highs but if you work you can bring the whole line up well do you know what I mean I went to one day meeting and it was like hey my name is Jerry and I'm an alcoholic and I hated saying it was the last meeting I went to well you know just because I didn't want to confess that over my life you know so my way to quit wasn't by going to meetings I was still labeled to quit you know three years next month but like you said it's a personal day [Music] we're at the sweet spot of concentrating on being better than most people the thing that we do and just appreciating the act of that and being like I'm still young enough to do it pure you get old enough to have the wisdom to know how to do it correctly and young enough to still have the years to get it done you have so many collections before someone tells you to take a seat you've so many collections I have so many more records I just figured out how to make them without going it just I just think about jay-z you know young enough to buy the right car old enough not to put rims on it that's her no not to put rims on it and I feel like I'm in that space and I feel like you're in that space until the doctor is gonna tell me bad news yeah and I swear to you until that day I've got it figured out and this is the most fun every morning I wake up I go I get another one of these and most people figure that out much later on in life not drinking has a lot to do with plugging into that a little earlier than other people but I go like I still get to ride the ride yeah you know and that's why when people we love pass away we go like oh you can't stay on the ride like when Mac Miller passed away my first thought was you don't get to stay here you bring up Mac and you played on small world yeah and you said that you didn't expect to be on his album well I didn't expect to play on his album right he said come over and listen to stuff and there's a true story like I started talking to my manager about like well and we got to talk about splits and we got to talk about I got to start making a living playing on other people's stuff because for years it would be like a really fun side note you know and I went okay so from now on I'll go and listen to people's records I would say that's my manager I'll go and listen to people's records and then I'll I won't play on them and then I'll tell you that there's something I want to play on and you can call their manager and we can work out the split and I got the max house and he played me this thing he had just worked on that morning and I went give me a guitar I mean yeah and he I think something to do with him haven't worked on it that day it was still wide open and fresh and and there's a lot of songs I hear people play for me and I go man I wish I was on the song but it's done and I picked up a guitar and I went buh duh buh buh but and we had such a great time and laughed and and I said to him no cash no credit I said I'm just happy to do it man that's all right and he said hey can I as it don't I don't want people talking about me I want people talking about your record you know and I just wish it wasn't fatal I just wish figuring out your life didn't take your life away from you and and I don't have an answer for how to fix that but it once you get old enough to understand how valuable life is you look at people and you go I just wish you could work this out but I think it's a constant like by no means like our brand is in a better place and my marriage is in a better place but you know I told my wife like this is the most unhappiest year of my life because of how hard it was for me to detach and put everything into this collection and put everything into this Nike collection and to hit rock bottom and hit hit a low place where I'd who I knew only God could take me to the finish line and yeah I'm super happy with the end result but I don't know that I would that I did it the best way it's like a constant like how do I creating things creating great things is like having a restaurant with the messiest kitchen that would get shut down if anybody from the health board had walked in there go you get an F your kitchen gets an F but walking out into the actual restaurant floor with the most beautiful dainty delicate little dish that's so delicious and you just know that if anybody ever looked behind the double swinging doors for they would see pure ratatouille do it when it's it's always men you said rock-bottom but it was on a project that may be one of the biggest that you'll ever do so you're working on a Nike collaboration where you're creating your own silhouette and it's rock bottom how does that happen is it the pressure of making it great or is it other things that happen yeah I think it's the pressure my wife will tell you this Saturday we were I was shoveling dirt on the campaign I just had to leave set and I was like man he may have to take me to the hospital I I don't know where we should go right now but I I can't be on set anymore mm-hmm you know and it was just like I had given every even styling the looks the following two days seemed like such a big task and I had just put everything into it you know and I and I didn't feed myself and I as much as I thought I was putting God first and mixing him into and trying to balance work and family I was just so depleted you know so depleted and I don't want to have to get depleted to do what I think is like great and I mean I don't want to have to be empty mm-hmm you know I need to find a new rhythm to be able to give to something without you know taking so much away from myself and so maybe you know getting a sneaker like I said it's like maybe I honored it too much you heard of me when I got the chance to work with Nike like I'm by no means will we ever be Jordan or be the next Jordan but like that's that's where I go you and I mean if I can't try and do something like that then why am I even playing the game and I grew up we're the same age it wasn't about like a sneaker drops and I was growing up it was either Jordans or nothing that's right yeah it was the best mm-hmm it was the emotion you got when you felt that thing it was like a car yeah it was like a car you get a Jordan v and it was like getting a new car imagine designing and creating chasing that emotion hmm it's pressure though chasing pressure when it when the kid sees this whatever he felt when we hopped out of the car whatever at the end of the campaign video like I want you to feel something that I felt when I was you know in eighth grade mm-hmm ninth grade and so the pressure of that emotion that you're chasing can be heavy [Music] it is a fairly new idea looking into the possibility of a creator also having some mental well-being obviously what this is pointing to and not to grab headlines but you think we see behavior of some of the biggest creators of our generation people who you've both worked with Kanye and you see what's happening and what you're describing and I think what you're getting to especially in 2018 we see people going off the rails from you know on social media and we don't know what's actually going on do you guys sympathise that's a great question and that's a really great word sympathize yeah I sympathize I look at it very differently though what happens when you decide to be it when you decide to make an invention of yourself you know artists have always been inventions right so we decide I think I'm gonna be that I think I'm gonna be that some people go I think I'm going to make all of this that I think I'm gonna move all of my chips into the idea of this living invention mm-hm and you can lose yourself in the invention so I I don't even begin to look at this like crazy you're off the rails and and because it's not I don't don't really have the data to be able I don't think anybody really does but I can tell you for sure that a component of it is being at your own steering wheel for so many years as a creative God and not knowing how to say well now I'm a guy and I was always astounded by Kanye's ability to donate most of who he is to that invention the problem is I have never seen anybody successfully live inside of the giant robot that you've built hmm for many many years I just feel like I agreed with the universe when I first met Kanye that I was never gonna just beat on the guy mm-hmm because I saw a genius and and I think a lot of people have but it just goes to show you that even if you are a genius you're still just a dude inside of the bigger metallic version of yourself going what does this button do and then don't check in with someone else to tell you maybe maybe step down from that you just burn into it ultimately what he's saying is the same thing every artist wants to say which is to break free of expectation to break free of and this art has been doing this for hundreds of years you know it's like responding to the world finding out what in the world is hypocritical what in the world is confining you and I think he's breaking he's trying to break through these walls but and everybody has a different way of doing that and he just invented a larger Hulk smash of it all and also didn't build in a fail-safe which is someone throwing you in a car and saying get out of here hmm if you don't have a boss to tell you and that's good here you hear you you hear the words yes men thrown around oh I would love to be sitting in here and say I have nothing to say about Kanye because he's somewhere treating himself or he's somewhere being okay like Jerry says he's somewhere going away but to talk about Connie I'm not going to shy away from the Konya conversation because it's like an MMA fight where the guy's not tapping out yeah and his ref isn't calling the fight so he's still a topic of conversation and I cannot wait till the day would be insensitive to talk about him I can't wait please do us the favor of making it seem a little unsavory and a little tacky to talk about it because you topped out please tap out I tapped out of you I tapped out tap out you know instead of the greps gonna I don't want to do he's still fighting he's still be still punching back yeah right and I think the thing of like yes man I think is to devalue his own self worth it I don't think he needs another man to tell him what he needs hmm to do and I think and kind of like what John was saying is I'm I'm too close to it to have an opinion as well and so I'm looking at it and in the backyard also and I'm saying wow if the world can look at this with so much forgiveness and so much grace and can continue to forgive and try and find an understanding of what he's saying and they won't do that for the for the normal people in their life for their friends and for other people that they live with daily but they're giving this Idol this level of grace and mercy well how why don't we just treat the rest of the world like that mm-hmm and see how much that's a great point we are all Kanye apologists to an extent that we do not offer to anyone in our personal life nobody who gets as many chances in our own personal life which is really interesting but but that's a larger conversation right we used to give our respect to people in our admiration to people on a provisional basis mm-hmm meaning it can be taken away if you behave a certain way and we see now that you know it's it's no secret there's a president that can do no wrong by those who have decided he's their guy totally Kanye can do no wrong if you decided he's your guy you'll just change the qualifications because it is very unpleasant to scrub someone off your list it's very unpleasant to say I was wrong or I changed my mind or not anymore what if what he's really saying is I want you to free think so bad that I'm gonna do what it takes for you not to like me so that you can begin to make your own decisions thank you is free-thinking an excuse though you're welcome so so free-thinking what if I'm gonna self-sacrifice okay you liking me not so that you what let's go in a free-thinking because it's a brilliant conversation right free-thinking does not mean lazy thinking it doesn't mean you can you're a pro your for your college essay you can take a piss on a sheet of paper and say I decided not to go with words for this essay there is a way to cooperate with the world so that free thinking and this does actually funnel into your collection right because you have this great combination of free thinking and discipline you didn't put out three shoes in a box there's still two shoes to here Kanye say it why stop at two shoes why not four shoes in a box so free thinking by his definition is anything other than what we're talking about free thinking does really mean a thoughtful intellectualizing of the things just right outside but we're talking about so to say that time has no definition is to basically opt out of cooperating in an intellectual world where we have to agree that time is a thing so we can talk about what kind of time we want to have so free thinking doesn't just mean freedom from thinking it's the discipline it did there's a discipline in abstraction you have this perfectly I look at your collection and I go that is one of the most disciplined collections of of taking something that's slightly contrarian the way that the jackets fit are the first time that I've seen someone take this rethinking of the geometry of a jacket and still keeping the cool of a leather jacket a couple weeks ago we had our first call together and you're talking about new record and you said your next single addresses the emotional elephant in the room yeah I talked to you when I knew that I had this song that I was gonna write and I hadn't written it yet and I went home like a week later and wrote it in 48 hours I know that I just thought about it I knew I had one mm-hmm every once in a while you come across a song you're like oh this skeleton is so good and people have a great amount of emotion and a great amount of sensitivity that they're just now coming to learn they have to feed or else they'll get sick they'll get sad and they'll get hurt and they'll get lost as I got to the end of my second month without finishing a song going in the studio every day I went what's going on what am i best at not just what am I good at see when you get to your 40s you're like what am i best at because I'm not gonna have all the time in the world to do everything I'm good at and that meant giving up a little bit of this idea of me being at the top of the radio charts you know we're constantly putting out stuff that everybody's fifteen-year-old daughter was gonna love and the new lights been great mm-hmm and it certainly hasn't been an example of it not working it's worked but just media being in the studio and listening back to stuff and going like do I buy that I don't it wasn't making me happy like I wasn't loving what I was hearing and then I had this moment where I was like put the MPC away for a minute bring out a tape machine acoustic guitar what do you do mm-hmm you baked log cabins that's what you do and so then I sat down and I wrote a song and it's called I guess I just feel like and it's this really honest confrontation with how it feels I guess I just feel like good things are gone I guess I just feel like nobody's honest and nobody's true and everyone's lying just to make it through and I guess I just feel like I'm the same way too and there's no politic in it and there's no there's nothing you could listen to to go wait wait mm-hmm yeah I'm trying now to just do what I always did which is just like go to the heart of something you are on tour with Dave Chappelle you're outfitting Black Panther and Kendrick Lamar do you think convergence culture is at an all-time high yeah yeah and speaking of black panther it was just like I feel like this Nike is like I feel like it's the Black Panther of the culture it's like Disney gives all these resources to Ryan Coogler and says hey come and write and direct this film and now you have somebody that understands culture with resources not that level of the way that movie reaches culture is at a different level it's like Vergil going to Louboutin that you have someone that understands culture now with resources to speak to culture it's a different thing and I feel like me going to Nike and having the opportunity to create a performance basketball shoe was saying hey I'm gonna make something that doesn't compromise you're gonna be able to go to the club in that it's and dunk on somebody in here and both at the highest level why does it have to compromise we are I feel like in a meritocracy right now we're where people are are not necessarily judging what they do on the genre like they used to because you'd be like the most outdated human being in the world if you were like I like rap and I like R&B what are you yeah that is a weird that's like saying I like blue clothes what a weird way to judge things you know and I think that's what we're trying to do you know with fashion yeah I need to know how the Drake story ended on the third that's hilarious well if you'll share it oh yeah man that's funny I was doing a show with Dave Chappelle okay Drake was in the audience Drake came up said hello and I hadn't seen him since his birthday and he reminded me well he didn't really remind me he told me for the first time cuz I was pretty far gone on this last night I'd ever had a drink that when I said goodbye to him he was about to leave the club and go into the street I put my arms out in front of him and I said remember me and remember this I just walked out and apparently was like what are you saying that's amazing the crowd laughed and I was like that's pretty Chappelle lost it if that would have said that I have confirmation from someone else standing next to him that ultimately I wasn't so bad that night I found out I wasn't so wasn't it so bad I didn't I apparently held it mostly together but the idea of looking at Drake and going remember me remember this I just turn around and got no car drove away and then after that I woke up and cried into the neckline of my sweatshirt the next morning and went alright I'm gonna remember this for sure that guy for sure I'll be saying it to myself you know so remember me and remember this there you go there's a mean food for you well I can't think both you guys enough congratulations on everything is going to be big year for both of you guys and this is it the complex cover [Music] you you

Channel: Complex

Views: 794,865

Rating: 4.9439974 out of 5

Keywords: sneakerhead, complex, complex originals, sneakers, news, entertainment, current affairs, young man, culture, complex tv, complex media, john mayer, jerry lorenzo, john mayer complex, jerry lorenzo complex, complex cover, nike fear of god, jerry lorenzo fear of god, nike air fear of god collaboration, nike x fear of god, john mayer interview, jerry lorenzo interview, john mayer drinking, john mayer kanye west, joe la puma

Id: 3nmMV9K9-8w

Length: 32min 26sec (1946 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/epaulet-mike]

I really enjoyed this video -- IMO it has some good insights on both menswear and the creative process. John Mayer's story at the end is kind of hilarious too.

[u/stickerless_cubes]

is jerry lorenzo/fog still a thing? I had always heard it described as instagram fashion but never realized how actually rare it is until I got off instagram altogether. I guess celebrities aren't really wearing it anymore much either.