DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION GALLERY

COME ON FEET

Come On Feet, Valerie Caesar, 2026.

Is there a more quintessentially New York shoe than the Timberland boot? (I’m talking about pre-gentrification era New York, not the Manolo Blahnik-fueled fantasies of a transplant’s wet dreams.)

Timberlands were rugged work gear, to be sure, but growing up in Brooklyn, there was no better footwear for stomping through concrete streets strewn with wads of chewing gum and shards of broken glass.

Like the game of chess, Timberlands are invoked in countless hip hop songs of my youth, marking them as uniform item for street soldiers, hip hop heads, and those who rep the more urban face of New York. In the A Closer Look video below, I pair a zoomed in view of the iconic pastel-brush illustrated boot with Madlib/Quasimoto’s song “Come On Feet,” the Melvin Van Peebles-sampled lyrics (quoted below) highlighting both the manifestation or birth of the shoe through illustration, as well as the racist linking of style and ethnicity with criminality via an anthem of marronage.

Come on feet
Come on, come on feet
Come on feet
Come on, feet
Come on, feet

Come on feet, cruise for me (do your thang)
Trouble ain't no place to be!
Come on feet, do ya thang, aw nah (you all know whitey's game)
Come on legs, come on run (guilty of what he say you done)
Come on knees, don't be mean
Come on knees, cuz that ain't the first red you've ever seen
Come on feet, do your thing (come on baby!)
Don't cop out on me (come on baby!)
Don't give in on me
Come on legs, come on cruise for me

A CLOSER LOOK

Watch this short video at the full screen setting to hear the music paired with Come on Feet, and to view it in closer detail.