The story behind Kendrick’s custom California pin belt from the GNX era

On Friday (November 22), just as we were all winding down for the weekend, Kendrick Lamar surprise-dropped GNX, his sixth studio album and a blistering victory lap after a much publicised beef with, well, you know. Though since then there’s been much debate surrounding the contents of the album – including Kendrick adopting the saviour persona he so forcefully rejected on Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, and a couple of lawsuits from Drake to boot – the Compton native seems to be taking it all in his stride and having a bit of fun with it instead. This was apparent when, at the beginning of this week, Kendrick dropped the video for “squabble up”, the album’s Debbie Deb-sampling second track where the rapper loudly proclaims on the chorus “I feel good, get the fuck up out my face.”

In the Calmatic-directed video, Kendrick drops a number of West Coast references that shout-out his home town, state, and iconic artists from the scene. A giant version of Nate Dogg’s G Funk Classics CD can be seen rotating from a chandelier, the artwork from Ice-T’s POWER and Isaac Hayes’ Black Moses also get recreated, plus a bunch of local references like highway signs and scraper bikes (you can read a full list from VIBE magazine here). One West Coast reference you might’ve missed, though, is the statement belt buckle that Kendrick wears throughout the video. We first got a glimpse of it on the album’s grainy, black and white cover art, but the “squabble up” video allowed us to see it for the first time in colour – but what’s the story behind the belt?

“I just assumed like with everything it was never going to come out,” says Eli Russell Linnetz from his car in LA, “but it’s exciting when you get to work with people who actually end up putting your work out into the world.” ERL, Linnetz’s Venice Beach-based label, is the brand behind Kendrick’s GNX belt, a custom version of an original made three years ago from pin badges sourced from thrift stores and vintage flea markets. “It’s always interesting – at the time no one really said much about it, it just existed in the collection,” said Linnetz. “Sometimes you think you’re creating stuff in a void and you forget people are watching, so it was interesting that Taylor [McNeill], Kendrick’s stylist, reached out for the album cover specifically.”

And as we’ve seen with the rest of the “squabble up” video, Kendrick’s visual language is extremely intentional, and that extends to the fashion, too. “There’s so much meaning that goes into an album cover, and so they wanted me to create a belt that had all pins from California, which is my hometown, so it was a natural, easy project,” said Linnetz, before adding that “the original one was pins I had been collecting for a few years from all different states, and from all around the world.”

Though the original pins had taken that long to accumulate, the designer said that McNeill only reached out “a few weeks ago” to make the piece, so he got to sourcing all the objects front the same flea and vintage markets as the original, painstakingly attaching them together via a welding process, then plating them on to the final belt buckle. In the close-up image sent to us by Linnetz, you can see all the West Coast badges in detail, including from the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992, street signs from the state, baseball references, and even a nod to Hollywood via the Emerald City from The Wizard Oz. “A lot of people will just go to a store and be like, ‘I’m just going to wear this on my album cover’,” says Linnetz. “It takes someone really interesting and with a deep, poetic spirit in mind to remember something from years ago and say ‘this speaks to what’s happening in this moment right now’.”

And, just like everyone else, Linnetz first saw the piece on Kendrick with the rest of the world, when the GNX cover dropped on Friday. “It was insane to actually see the shoot,” he remembers. “It’s really funny – I don’t really pay much attention to what musicians wear, but if the request seems authentic and meaningful I’ll work with someone.” Operating more like an artisanal art studio than a traditional fashion brand, ERL shies away from celebrity gifting, preferring a model that’s a little more organic, with more meaning, like Kendrick and McNeill’s request. “We’re not like these other companies that have these massive PR teams that are sending things out all the time hoping someone will wear it,” says Linnetz, which checks out when you learn that, apart from the Kendrick’s, only one other bespoke design of the pin belt exists in the world. “There’s only one other person I made a custom one for,” says the designer. “Rihanna.” Well, how could you say no.

Scroll through the gallery above to see the custom belt in detail, and the gallery below to see all of Kendrick’s greatest fashion hits.