Hip Hop Artist, Football Pro, Comic Publisher Launch Sat-Morn Apparel

[ENGLISH] Malik Yusef, Jerry Azuma, Josh Blaylock Streetwear Line Celebrates Comic, Cartoon Lifestyle – Chicago’s Hip Hop and Comic Book Powerhouses are collaborating in a big way this spring with new venture, Sat-Morn Apparel.  Sat-Morn (short for « Saturday Morning) which brings the worlds of high end streetwear and comic pop culture together, will launch its first products this April in boutiques from New York to Tokyo and everywhere in between.  The company’s first release will be a line of Voltron: Defender of the Universe t-shirts, with each design limited to 1,000 pieces and packaged in a vintage tin lunch box.  Future releases will feature a mix of licensed properties and original designs.

The partnership may seem a surprise to some in the comic book industry, but Malik « WordSmyth » Yusef is an avid comic book fan and both he and Blaylock already carry a wide array of experience in the apparel world.  Yusef brings along business associate, Jerry Azuma, with whom he has a long running relationship.

Yusef is already known in the streetwear community for the MCM™ brand, and is aggressively leveraging existing relationships for some major partnerships between Sat-Morn and the fashion world’s heavy hitters. He is also a spoken word and hip hop artist, best known for winning an emmy for his performance of I Spit on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and the song Would You Like to Ride, featuring local friends and rap superstars Common and Kanye West.  Malik is currently touring with Raheem DeVaughn and Jill Scott, and is an acting artist and purveyor
of Kanye West’s brand, G.O.O.D. Music.

 Josh Blaylock, although now president of Devil’s Due Publishing, a top ten comic book publisher, was instrumental in igniting the 1980s explosion of comic book and cartoon apparel in the late 1990s, and has come full circle with Sat-Morn.

« Malik and I just happened to click when we met at a convention last year, » said Blaylock. « I was planning to begin developing a designer apparel spin-off within Devil’s Due, and he was planning to develop a comic inspired apparel line in the streetwear community.  After a few meetings, we realized the planets were just aligned for this.  I’m a huge fan of just about everyone’s music at G.O.O.D. and couldn’t be more excited. »

« Of course, in our lane we have a lot of geeks, » added Yusef, « Fashion, electronics and gadgets – so it only makes perfect sense that me and my people from my label make a foray into comics and fuse it with our passions.  It is just smart culture, smart business. »

Jerry Azuma, formerly a Chicago Bear, is now a regular sports news commentator seen on ESPN.

Attendees of April’s New York Comicon are encouraged to get a sneak peek of Sat-Morn’s upcoming releases at the Devil’s Due Publishing booth.

Look for many more announcements from comic’s newest, and only, true high-fashion streetwear line in the coming weeks.