Gucci already has a questionable reputation within the rap community. In 2019, an informal ban on the luxury brand was put in place after it released an $890 wool balaclava jumper that looked strikingly close to blackface, a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by White performers to portray a caricature of a Black person.
Even Soulja Boy, who’s responsible for the 2008 single “Gucci Bandana” blasted the brand at the time, saying, “Fuck Gucci! Gucci canceled. Get the fuck outta here. Oh I forgot, Gucci racist as fuck. Man, y’all got me fucked up. Gucci put out that racist ass shit with that blackface shit on that shit. Fuck Gucci on my mama.”
So @gucci puts out a sweater that looks like blackface……
On Black History Month….
And then issues an apology because they didn't know that blackface images are racist.??♂️ pic.twitter.com/G3HjPTIuuQ
— Tariq Nasheed ?? (@tariqnasheed) February 7, 2019
Now, Jim Jones has a bone to pick with Gucci as well, years after declaring he didn’t give a damn what people thought about him for rocking the brand.
In a video uploaded to Instagram on Tuesday (February 8), the Dipset rapper detailed the unfavorable experience he recently had at a Gucci store and explained why he felt he was being racially profiled.
“We been in Gucci for about an hour,” he said in the clip. “And we in Gucci in the VIP. Since we came in here, ain’t nobody came in here and showed us no courtesy, no amenities, no nothing. Period. Not even a drink of water. I asked to speak to a manager. Sent me a Black guy out here starting to tell me some bullshit.
“So they got the Black guy racial profiling on Black people. I asked to speak to a manager bigger than him. Everybody disappeared. Ain’t nobody come out to check. I still ain’t get no sparkling water. I still ain’t get no champagne. I still ain’t get nothing.”
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Visibly heated, Jim Jones continued his rant in the caption and expressed how much it disappointed him to feel mistreated by another Black man.
“And just like that sh*t went bad in Gucci,” he wrote. “I was more hurt that the black people was treating us like that more than anything. Very racy and all we wanted was some water sparkling water cause I was parched to be been shopping for a long time I’m usually drunk by time I leave stores like this cause they be serving that Champaign smh.
“This man literally spent over 100k in there in the last 3 months and this is how they handle him nasty. I told him leave that shit on the counter we out Gucci be moving dusty Lol Sh*t is hilarious it never stops.”
But Jones did end the shopping spree on a high note and wound up at Bergdorf Goodman where he said he was treated like gold.
“Ask for @chrisoff5th if u shopping at Bergdorf,” he wrote alongside a follow-up video. “They got the drip, but most of all they got the hospitality and champagne and Bergdorf water and he ask me if I was hungry ok I’m gassing it now, but they had the champagne and sparkling water.”
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