Celebrating 20 Years of Patta, founders Edson Sabajo and Guillaume “Gee” Schmidt, and Patta Soundsystem head honcho Victor Crezée talk their musical origins, the essence of community and the history of hip-hop.

What do you think of when you hear the name Patta? Is it Freddie Gibbs or The Alchemist? Yussef Days or Erykah Badu? Air Max 1s or Air Max 90s? New Balance or Asics? The Dutch brand, celebrating its 20-year anniversary, has relentlessly rewritten the rules of streetwear, finding a home at the intersection of music and style, dropping sought- after apparel and trainer collaborations and getting the hottest rappers to model them.

 

Deriving from a term for “shoe” that nods to the Surinamese heritage of founders Edson Sabajo and Guillaume “Gee” Schmidt, the original Amsterdam store opened in 2004 on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal before they moved to The Zeedijk (Sea Dike). One of the oldest streets in Amsterdam, it was built at the beginning of the 13th century to protect the Dutch capital from flooding; The Zeedijk became a haven for drug-led delinquency in the 1970s and ‘80s before accommodating fashion boutiques and trendy eateries 50 years later. In the city and beyond, Patta has been ubiquitous. A walk down the cobbled paving stones of the capital today, you’ll see their script logo on all types of people. It’s become synonymous with Amsterdam’s liberal principles; an emblem of the impact the brand’s had on contemporary culture not only in The Netherlands but around the world.

 

Despite having a core team of creatives, Edson and Gee stay involved in Patta’s day-to-day operations; their label speak for itself, but after two decades at their creative apex, such a landmark necessitates a chat. Victor Crezée, the lauded Dutch DJ who heads operations at Patta Soundsystem – the brand’s designated music platform – also calls in from their Amsterdam offices, bridging the gap between the founders’ deep-rooted passion for hip-hop and sneaker culture. It’s impossible to summarise their impact in just one interview.

 

To understand Patta, we could start with the folkloric stories of two Surinamese, hip-hop heads travelling the world to source rare trainers and bring them back to The Netherlands. Before being heralded as one of Nike’s greatest collaborators, they filled suitcases worth of Jordans for a hungry clientele of European sneakerheads, and eventually, worked on some of the sportswear giants’ most coveted releases. The Nike Air Max 1 Chlorophyll comes to mind, with a grass green and slate grey colourway, it became an instant grail that resells for well over a grand.

But while Patta was just a fleeting thought, its founders were working at Fat Beats Records: the hip-hop mecca from New York that opened stores in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Atlanta and eventually along the Singel canal in Amsterdam. Capturing the unruly and rebellious streets of Manhattan, the walls of each shop were littered with rap paraphernalia: deliberately overfilled to encapsulate the claustrophobic and creative spirit of ‘90s hip-hop. Fans of 2Pac, Biggie, Missy Elliott and the stars of its time would cram in to flick through stacks of records and hear the next underground hit scratching from the Technics.

 

“Nowadays they call it community, but we were just hanging out and having a good time,” shrugs Edson nonchalantly on the other end of our Zoom call, “The cement was hip-hop and rap music. That’s what Patta started from.” Victor found Fat Beats as a teenager and never left, working at the shop and devoting himself to the art of DJing. “Edson took me under his wing. I was a young kid who fell in love with hip-hop in the mid-nineties, listening to Wu-Tang, Nas,” he digresses, “Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle completely blew my mind.” For Gee, Fat Beats was the pinnacle for underground music: “You never knew who was gonna come in. Dilla came true, The Alchemist, Mobb Deep, Big L as well. It was the sketch of what later became Patta.”

 

Edson and Gee knew Patta could be more than just a place to buy trainers. They wanted to build a culture that united their dual love of fashion and music. A year after opening, they created a mixtape with rappers and producers from The Netherlands; all the songs were about sneakers. “To rap about a topic and every song be different shows how creative of an artform hip-hop is,” says Edson, waving one of the original copies at the camera.

 

Dutch artists like Skate the Great, Opgezwolle, Nina and Mr. Probz, arguably the country’s most successful rapper, feature across the project. “It represented the whole hip-hop community in The Netherlands,” grins Gee through his solid gold tooth. Featuring on the record became a status symbol. If you wanted to be a rapper in Holland, you had to muscle your way onto the track-list.

“Loads of rappers called us up saying, ‘Yo, why am I not on this album? I thought we were friends’,” laughs Edson. “So, we told them to send their stuff and it grew into a project with over 30 records.” Many brands have used the essence of community to leverage clout, but not Patta. Edson, Gee and Victor have made it part of their DNA, not only amplifying the Dutch music scene but becoming an essential cog that’s moved it forward.

 

During our interviews, both Edson and Gee nickname Victor The Knowledge God, referencing a classic Raekwon record and the DJ’s diverse knowledge of music. Playing out at clubs around Amsterdam and New York age 15, before working in the Patta store, he made DJing his full-time career, hosting radio shows on NTS and Red Light Radio.

 

Patta Soundsystem was originally a collective of DJs who the brand could call upon to play at fashion-related parties, but when Victor came on board, it took on an entirely different meaning: “I wanted to look at the name Patta Soundsystem and the importance of music to the brand,” he explains. “I wanted Patta Soundsystem to be a curator that encompasses all of the music that we do: collaborations with artists, putting out music, playing events; what we were already doing but altogether.”

 

Patta’s use of the phrase sound system isn’t as literal as in the UK, given the impact of Caribbean culture on our country since the Windrush Generation of the 1940s. However, Gee understands, in the same way that sound system is the backbone of hip-hop, music is the backbone of Patta. “There are some sound systems in The Netherlands but there is no traditional sound system culture like in theUK.Themeaningismoreintricate,there’salot of intention in that word for us.”

The list of artists that Patta has worked with is enviable: Conway The Machine, MIKE, Wiki, Freddie Gibbs, The Alchemist, Erykah Badu, Yussef Days, Tems, Tom Trago, Cash Cobain, Skepta and Little Simz are just a snapshot of names who’ve featured in campaigns, collaborated on clothing or released music together with Patta Soundsystem. One of Victor’s personal favourites was the capsule collection with SMIB, a collective from Amsterdam breaking new ground in the city’s hip-hop scene. “For their fifth anniversary, we did a collaborative album with the crew and some of the older hip-hop figures from The Netherlands,” he says. “It was in the middle of COVID, so it was dope being in the studio with everybody and seeing it come to life. It felt like a homecoming.”

 

Just days after our interview, rising London rapper 8SZN models Patta’s AW24 collection. A month later, they announce a collaboration with trailblazing Nigerian musician Seun Kuti, one of the sons of Nigerian Afrobeat revolutionary, Fela Kuti. “This collaboration is a tribute to the transformative power of music as a force for change. It underscores the enduring impact of those who use their platform to speak truth to power, embodying Seun Kuti’s role as a modern-day revolutionary,” reads a caption on their Instagram page.

 

“To work with all these artists, it’s dope. They love to work with us because we’re dope too! We’ve been doing this for 20 years, our credentials speak for themselves,” explains Edson, noting their LuLu EP with Conway The Machine and The Alchemist as an example of this synergy. He’s keen to highlight that the collaborative essence of hip-hop is alive in the DNA of Patta, although that doesn’t mean they’ll work with everyone. “We’re still independent and don’t give a fuck about what people think. It’s a blessing! We always have people who want to work with us. They might be dope, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dope to us.”

So then, what does Patta look for in a collaborator, particularly in the realms of music? Gee reels offPlayboi Carti, Don Toliver and Wandsworth’s very own Jawnino as artists he admires currently. He says that it’s their authenticity and ability to bring something unique to the table that unites them, no matter their popularity. Clearly, Patta’s team still has an insatiable urge to discover new artists before anyone else.

 

It’s why they recently opened a store in Lagos, Nigeria. As the epicentre of Africa’s Alté movement, which personifies the non-conforming spirit of youth culture from the continent, the city and its creative scene has become one of the world’s most coveted. Skepta-approved artist Slawn came from Lagos to London and went from skate rat to filling the Saatchi gallery with his painted canvases; musicians like Amaarae, Cruel Santino and Odunsi The Engine have become superstars; brands like Motherlan, WAFFLESNCREAM and Dencity are holding down the Lagosian streetwear scene. This generation of African artists are bringing something new and Patta hopes its presence facilitates more creativity.

 

Pitched up in the corner of the Lagos store is a stack of bright orange Marshall speakers. In 2022, Patta partnered with the audio brand to support Oroko and Echobox, two independent radio stations from Ghana and Amsterdam, and amplified a range of talented musicians and DJs through a party in Paris. Earlier this year, they cranked up their collaboration with the release of a limited edition Emberton II speaker, drawing inspiration from Caribbean sound system culture. At the heart of their joint endeavours is an understanding that music would be nothing without community, a notion inspiring their future conversations.

“It’s always been a dream of ours to create a modular sound system with specialists from Jamaica and Japan and store them in our shops so that they can lead a life of their own,” admits Victor. He thinks this will help young people get out of the house, host meetups and most importantly, inspire them. “I would love for the sound systems to be owned by different communities. For instance, if a young crew wanted to throw a party, they could borrow a stack as a means of having better sound.”

 

Like everything Patta does, this idea is rooted in the history of hip-hop. 51 years ago, the genre was born out of a Block Party in New York, when DJ Kool Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell threw a ‘Back-to-School Jam’ at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. The spirit of community that formulates the foundations of hip-hop originated in those moments of collaboration around the block party concept, which Patta Soundsystem is keen to revive if their plans for a free-use sound system come to life. “Patta’s pillars are peace, love, unity and having fun” says Edson. “We need to remind the youth of what things used to look like, if you know more about history, the better your own ideas will be.”

 

Indeed, Patta has a knack for looking at the past and seeing how it can write the future. However, the brand is aware that the next generation will ultimately define what community looks like next: “I still feel young, even though I’m old. I want the next generation to be better and create the legacy that we’re trying with Patta,” explains Edson. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years, saying the same message, starting from the mixtape, then putting out music and having fun with it. You cannot look into the future, but what makes me excited is that people can finally understand what Patta is.”

 

Buy your copy of NOTION The Artists Vol. 1 featuring Patta Soundsystem here