Ye gave Nobu the shoes off his feet, three weeks before the Pods dropped

Nobu Matsuhisa posted the picture himself. Ye’s standing on the stone floor of Nobu by the Beach, the chef’s restaurant at Atlantis The Royal in Dubai, grinning, and he isn’t wearing any shoes. Next to him Nobu has one foot cocked at the camera, showing off the sole of a black sock shoe. Ye’s all in black otherwise: a sleeveless top, loose trousers, a black cloth over his head.

“The reason he was barefoot was because he gave me a pair of shoes of his design that he wore,” Nobu wrote on Instagram. HotNewHipHop had the story on 23 Nov 2023, and Khaleej Times followed the next day.

Three weeks later those shoes had a name and a pre-order page: the YZY Pods. They were Ye’s first shoe after adidas, as Complex and Vibe both put it. Nobody could buy a pair yet. Nobu didn’t need to.

Two pads under a sock

What Nobu’s raised foot gives away is the sole. It isn’t one piece: there’s a black pad under the ball of the foot and another under the heel, with bare knit between them. The retail Pod has exactly that.

Ye had spent the summer of 2023 walking round Italy in sock shoes, and he hadn’t taken them off by the time he got to Dubai. Hypebeast’s story on 15 Dec 2023 put this version on the Yeezy webstore for pre-order: black only, three sizes, a collar up to mid-shin, a thin rubber sole. Vibe dated the Instagram launch to 28 Dec.

“His new Yeezy pod shoes”

He didn’t stop wearing them once anyone could buy them. At Saint’s basketball game in Los Angeles on 11 Jan 2024, HollywoodLife had Ye in a black jacket with the hood up, pants and “his new Yeezy pod shoes”.

The price didn’t last as long as the habit. The Pods launched at $200, and on 11 Feb 2024 Ye’s Super Bowl ad sent people to a yeezy.com where everything cost $20, XXL reported. Complex added that anyone who’d paid $200 could ask for $180 back.

Nobu got his straight off Ye’s feet, before any of that.