PORTAGE, MI — Bearing witness to faith and spirituality — with a nod to hip-hop culture — a new brand in Kalamazoo has taken flight.
The Bear Witness brand, a collaboration between former Kalamazoo City Commissioner Eric Cunningham and local hip-hop artist/anti-violence activist Ed Genesis, was launched a week ago.
Two years in the making, the brand — for now at least — is offered exclusively at BillPlay Apparel, a shoe and clothing store at The Crossroads mall, 6650 S. Westnedge Ave., in Portage.
BillPlay founder Sammy Graves, 28, is Genesis’ younger cousin.
“He (has) the most successful brand that has come out of Kalamazoo, the most recognizable, it just made sense,” Genesis said of his cousin’s brand. “I just thank God I’m related to him.”
God is a big part of what is driving the Bear Witness brand.
The logo, drawn up by Genesis, features a bear resembling the late Biggy Smalls wearing the iconic COOJI sweater that the Notorious B.I.G. was known for wearing. The bear has his two hands folded together in prayer — which prompted Cunningham to dub the cub the “prayer bear.”
When Cunningham first saw Genesis’ design a couple years ago, he immediately asked if they could meet, so he could ask what it meant to him.
“He showed me this art piece and I was just like, ‘Man, we need to share this with the community. This isn’t something that you should just keep on a notebook piece of paper because you randomly felt the need to draw it,’” Cunningham said. “And it just spiraled from there.”
Cunningham said the piece spoke to him in two different ways: one being cultural, in reference to art and hip-hop, and the other being spiritual.
“The art is really reflective of things that happen in my community or individuals that I grew up with,” Cunningham said, emphasizing the impact hip-hop has on culture in Kalamazoo. “But then on the flip side, with the prayer, that also spoke to a lot of the pieces that go back to my original beginnings in regards to making sure that God is the first in my life, to make sure that when things aren’t going my way, or are in the plus, regardless, to still keep prayer a part of my life.”
Genesis said the importance of the hip-hop culture, to him, is how it’s presented people such as himself with a platform they may not have otherwise had, and he wanted to lift that up.
“That’s the ‘Bear Witness,’” he said. “My story is I went from being incarcerated and getting called out of class at KVCC (Kalamazoo Valley Community College) and getting arrested to now being a KVCC instructor. So, it’s about bearing witness to individual testimonies, the journey, and the testimony of the light. We’re unapologetically saying, ‘look what God did.’”
While the hoodies that bear the brand logo and the words “Bear Witness” do not draw reference to anything Biblical beyond the depiction of the bear in prayer, the tags do draw reference to the passage of John 1:7, a passage that possesses the words “bear witness” within it.
“He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him,” the passage reads.
“Christ said that I came to bear witness so that those who may see can see the light,” Genesis said. “That’s what it’s really about — to be able to see somebody, the likes of us even, coming together, a former commissioner of Kalamazoo and then a rapper.
“When we take away all of the other things that we do community-wise, family-wise and things like that, we have so much in common. One of them is hip-hop and one of them is spiritual. We pray.”
Promoting individual testimony is at the heart of the brand, Cunningham said.
“Oftentimes, we get caught up in life and we don’t really share our story, and that’s the play on bear witness,” he said. “We all deal with trials, we all deal with tribulations and oftentimes, we don’t share those stories, either with the next generation or with colleagues or individuals who are in our circles that can learn from the experiences that we dealt with, or the things that we’re going through.”
That leads to fellowship, something else the first chapter of John talks about.
Both men hope the design will resonate with people of all generations, from elders who may be coming from a more faith-based place down to young people.
“The younger generation, even though they didn’t experience the culture of our time, they still resonate with it, because it’s prevalent as part of their history,” Genesis said.
Having the hoodies, and likely later T-shirts and other apparel, available at BillPlay presents an opportunity to create synergy between generations, Cunningham said.
“Sammy has a very young population (coming here) and myself and Ed are from an older generation, so we are able to get that blend of target marketing,” he said. “I think it is a blessing to be able to have Bear Witness in this space. (Graves) has one of the premiere brands in the city of Kalamazoo probably one of the largest brands in this community.”
The collaboration is the second which Genesis — who is in his 40s, like Cunningham — has worked with his younger cousin on. He previously sold his Northside brand of hats at Graves’ former storefront.
“We’re real family and I’ve been really proud of him,” Genesis said. “I watched his growth of building a successful clothing line from selling out the trunk of his car to being across the hall at the mall to getting a bigger store and he’s just been on a long run. He could have sold other brands, but instead he did his own and this store is full of his.
“Watching him grind ... we can learn something from him. He’s done it.”
The hoodies are available in pastel blue and pink symbolizing Easter colors and the rising of Christ. They are $40 per hoodie or two for $75. BillPlay is upstairs at The Crossroads next to Macy’s.
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