article is paywalled, wanna post it for those of us unlearned?
There's a neat little way around most paywalls: Just open archive.is and copy the URL of the article you wanna read into the search bar. You can then open and read an archived version of the article. Comes in really handy!
The gist is that king is used as a term of encouragement and endearment in the black community. It's meant to be uplifting and reassuring. Since Tyshawn faces a lot of criticism based on racial undertones, I think it's important to point this out before people start calling him boastful and jocky again. (I realize many people will do that anyway, of course, but maybe there's a least some who think about it before judging him.)
Do you think it’s that deep? His underwear company is called brick and Hardies (with its fisting sex toy logo) is named after a game where he and friends would hit each other. Basquiat’s crowns this is not.
I wouldn't say this is
deep at all. On the contrary, it's quite on the nose. But just like kids don't get the most blatant sex jokes in movies, even such an obvious meaning tends to go right over the heads of people who rarely interact with and/or show little interest in black communities.
What do you think is the meaning? "Look at me, I'm the king!"? Possible, of course. But I just don't think Tyshawn is that kind of dude.
^I'd bet 0% of people were wondering why a black person would call their company king.
There's literally already a post in here that's says it's a ripoff of Hop King. As I said, I can't tell if it's trolling or ignorance, but judging by a lot of posts in other threads about Tyshawn and other black skaters, there's a LOT of ignorance going on on Slap.