Imagine listing a pair of decidedly worn-in black Air Force 1s on eBay, only to have a photo of the beaten-up sneakers used as Kendrick Lamar cover art more than a year later. For one Arkansas couple now going public with their headlines-friendly story, that’s exactly what happened.
Speaking with Carter Thweatt for regional outlet KTHV, the couple in question—Billy Lingo and Darla Wilson—walked viewers through how they came to find out that their otherwise mundane eBay listing had been repurposed for Kendrick’s surprise-dropped “Not Like Us” follow-up, which notably arrived just as the MTV Video Music Awards kicked off that evening. The song wasn’t shared with an official title, though fans have since taken to referring to it as “Watch the Party Die,” a phrase heard repeatedly in the five-minute track.
“What happened was I sold the shoes and I said, ‘Oh great,I sold a pair of shoes,’” Wilson recalled of that fateful September night. “So I got ‘em, boxed ‘em up, printed the label. All of a sudden, my phone was blowing up.”
Lingo noted that he wasn’t deeply familiar with Kendrick’s work prior to this instance of sheer happenstance putting his and Wilson’s eBay account on the proverbial map, though that has since changed.
“I’m not gonna lie to you,” he explained. “I didn’t know a whole lot about him. … But I really know about him now.”
The report notes that the shoes were first listed on the couple’s account in June of last year. While they did sell for $70 earlier this month amid the initial hoopla of the surprise Kendrick drop, that sale was ultimately canceled. Now, a new auction has been set up, complete with a buy-now option that’s currently set at $75,000. Bids start at $5,000 for the auction, which is slated to end on Sept. 28.
Kendrick hasn’t addressed any of this. The song itself, meanwhile, remains live on his IG.
Kendrick’s blockbuster year, which centered largely on his and Drake’s extensive (and as we’ve said time and time again, historic) back-and-forth, was recently capped off with news that he had been selected as the next Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner. Given that the Super Bowl is back in New Orleans in 2025, this announcement generated quite a bit of debate, with Lil Wayne later saying “it hurt a whole lot” to have not been given the hometown honor instead.
Related
Read the full article here
