Tony Hawk Sold Skateboard Decks Painted With His Blood, and Lil Nas X Has Thoughts
Lil Nas X caused drama earlier in 2021 when he released his "Satan Shoes" with a drop of blood in the soles. But now, Tony Hawk has a similar project.
Aug. 26 2021, Published 12:20 p.m. ET
If there are two people we never expected to mention in the same sentence, they are rapper Lil Nas X and legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk. The two come from two completely different industries. But they've crossed paths in an unexpected way that has the internet talking.
What's actually going on, though? Tony has just released a project that is reminding a lot of people, including Lil Nas X, about some drama the rapper got into earlier in 2021. Now, Nas is calling out what might be a double standard.
Is there beef between Lil Nas X and Tony Hawk?
It's hard to forget the controversy that Lil Nas X went through after releasing his "Satan Shoe" that supposedly featured a drop of his blood in the soles back in July 2021. In an effort to promote his single "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)," he released the shoes in collaboration with MSCHF.
The shoes caused a lot of people to talk about Satanism in the music industry. It upset a lot of religious people, and it even got him in some legal trouble with Nike.
But now, it looks like Tony has done something similar. In August 2021, a collaboration between Tony and Liquid Death Mountain Water was announced. The company and skater came together to release skateboard decks that are painted in part with his blood.
Even though Nas has already found himself in a few controversies over the course of his relatively short career so far, Tony is pretty unproblematic. The rapper noticed that people aren't sending the same hate to Tony that they did to him.
"Now that Tony Hawk has released skateboards with his blood painted on them and there was no public outrage, are y’all ready to admit y’all were never actually upset over the blood in the shoes?" Lil Nas X tweeted. "And maybe you were mad for some other reason?"
While some people agreed with the rapper, others pointed out that the controversy over his shoes wasn't about the blood in the soles but about how they were publicly referred to as "Satan Shoes."
One user on Twitter wrote that the religious reference in the shoes was something that "a lot of older Christians were not gonna be OK with" and pointed out that they may have felt like Nas is a "gay man making a mockery of their religion." Another tweet said that if they were called "Angel Shoes" and included "the blood of Christ," they would have been extremely popular without the controversy.
What is the deal with the Liquid Death Tony Hawk skateboard?
Tony Hawk for real had his blood drawn for these new skateboards. His blood was mixed into red paint that is used to paint the skate decks. You can watch a video of the process on the Liquid Death website.
Just like Lil Nas X's shoes, they're limited edition. Only 100 were made and they're already sold out (at $500 a piece). Ten percent of the profits from the collab go to The Skatepark Project, Tony's nonprofit that gives people safe and legal places to skate.
Some of the profits from the sale of these skateboards will also go to 5 Gyres. This organization is, according to its website, "a leader in the global movement against plastic pollution." 5 Gyres uses scientific research and gets help from local communities to foster change all over the world and fight what it calls a "global crisis."
