The Hip Hop Kids: producer Don Cannon and pro skater Stevie Williams bring us Sk8tique

Producer Don Cannon (Credit: Courtesy of Team Cannon)

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What do you get when a hip-hop producer and a hip-hop skateboarder join forces? Sk8tique, where skating and fashion collide. Quite simply, it’s a hip-hop lifestyle boutique where you can cop your own skateboard, music and clothes, in, where else, but Little 5 Points. The brainchild of rising producer Don Cannon, the man behind Young Jeezy’s “Go Crazy”, and Stevie Williams, the skateboarding pioneer seen in Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push” video and several Tony Hawk videos, including Tony Hawk’s "American Wasteland," Sk8tique is like no other skate shop Atlanta or anywhere else has seen.

It’s not like they sat down and planned Sk8tique out for years. It all really came together in nine months but the two Philly natives have been friends for a minute and wanted to collaborate. “We always wanted to some business ventures,” Don Cannon explains, “[\but we had to wait until we got our money all the way correct and we jumped out there and did it. . . he was like ‘what you wanna do?' S*%t, I like fashion, music. He was like 'f$%k it, I like skateboarding. Let’s just mash it together, make a store.'"

Williams, who has his own DGK, (Dirty Ghetto Kids), clothing line believes that hip-hop is truly the tie that binds and knows exactly who Sk8tique appeals to. “People that just support me like I support them,” he says from Los Angeles, while making his way back to Atlanta for Sk8tique’s grand opening on October 17. “We’re all a part of pop culture. It doesn’t matter if you rap, act, dance, skate, football, basketball, whatever you do, you’re a part of the hip-hop lifestyle culture.”

Being a part of that lifestyle has no racial barriers either. “It ain’t just black kids and white kids. It’s like more of a universal type of lifestyle. It’s whoever feeling me,” proclaims Williams. “They just kind of just ride with that movement. It ain’t really no race involved.”

Fashion and music isn’t where it ends either. Sk8tique has a ramp courtesy of New Era and a video game lounge compliments of the Konsole Kingz. Still music, hip-hop specifically, is the common denominator of it all and Don Cannon isn’t playing it safe. “We gone start something new,” he promises. “We’re gone start this thing with jump drives where you buy a $40 jump drive and every month you just load up on music. It’s gone be something totally different to do. It’s gone be mixtapes, it’s gone be hard-to-find records and you’ll be able to log on the web site I just launched called thestudiorats.com to stay in the loop.”

For the October 17 launch, expect lots of surprises. “You gonna see a killer performance,” says Cannon. “It is gonna be for the general public because people are gonna come through. We’re gonna give away a couple of things. I don’t know man. It’s gonma be real fun. Lotta press. Red carpet. All of that.”

Check out Sk8tique’s Grand Opening at 1140 Euclid Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30307.