'Streetwear' is about 'fashion', and fashion is about how things look. Com Raid is about words. Our words. It's about the words we stand by. It's about the words we want to live by. It's about breaking down every word, every reason, every excuse, every uttered fear that locks us into an inevitably ordinary way of life. It's about refusing to anxiously resign ourselves to the words that sink under our skin and give us the stories of loss, failure and regret that teach us not try and become all that we truly want to be.

Words make hip hop. You hear about sneaker 'culture' and street design 'culture'. If these things were truly cultures unto themselves then they wouldn't depend on hip hop for their authentic legitimacy. It's all hip hop. Face it, we're all brought here together because we want to support the designers and brands who are pushing beyond the boundaries of cliche and proper taste to make hip hop a total graphic language we can literally live in and relate to every day. Com Raid is part of this mission.

But there's more. We want more.

We want true culture, no just a market segment, a distribution chain, or a launch party invite list. Culture isn't about us all trying to look the same. It's bigger than just which cue you stand in. Culture is something that gives us a frame of shared experience and understanding through which we can exhibit and express our own difference. And from the acceptance of and respect for difference comes lasting peace.

You don't have to say a word to accept someone. You don't have to drop knowledge hard on their heads to make them think like you. In fact, is 'knowledge' really a cure for ignorance? You can't make peace by trying to be right.You can't win peace in an argument. If we want the peace and unity that has always been hip hop's promise, perhaps we need to look deeper at what ignorance is and how right now it's being exploited for the sake of war and prejudice.

Ignorance is more that just the lack of knowledge or the absence of meaning. More knowledge won't cure ignorance. We all know the meaning of 'peace'. We all know the meaning of 'war'. We all know what it is to die. Everyone does. Its all in our heads already. 'Ignorance' is really more about the limitation of language. It's about not having the words to include new ideas and alternate points of view. It's when all we can possibly think and imagine is constricted by the careful regulation of the words we use to interpret everyday life.

It's about words. Your words matter, don't they? Your words tell us about the person you think you are. Without words, "you" wouldn't exist. There'd be no "I", no "us" and no "them". Want to change how you live? Want to change how you think? Change your words.

Marketers know this. The conservatives know this. The war makers know this. They never argue for war by trying to explain how it is a good thing. They know that making arguments makes you sound 'controversial' or 'political', not 'trustworthy' and 'down to earth'. Instead of arguing they work hard to limit the words commonly used in public to talk about their wars so as make them sound 'neccessary', 'inevitable' or 'honourable'. Death is no longer horrific, just 'regrettable', like getting a parking ticket.

Think of the words "War on Terror". Think of all the carefully scripted words consistently used by the Pentagon and Bush Administration to excuse the aggression that lies at the heart of Republican foreign policy.Think of how hard it is to talk about their war without using their words. Ever noticed how whatever they say always sounds so reasonable and immediately self-evident from the very moment its said, before you can even stop to think about it? 'Terror' always has to be fought, right? Bush not only fights it, he goes to war against it. People who fight wars are heroes and patriots. Patriots never need to be scrutinised or challenged on their commitment to freedom and the preservation of democracy. And so Bush's Republican's agenda to suppress the very civil liberties that make our freedom goes on without question.

Hip hop teaches us that words are weapons, that the tongue is a sword. Our conservative persecutors have long known that words are more than this. Words are everything.

Do you want you own opinions secure in your own words, or do want to eat what you're fed and collapse into the language of public opinion? Words matter. Conservatives get it. Left or progressive political groups and movement's don't.

Com Raid is about upsetting the carefully ordered language of authority, which has always been the same whether in the name of government, god, the dollar, the rebel or "the people". Designs such as our 'Terror Threat' and 'Master' prints confuse this carefully programmed language to expose these words for what they are: cells into which we pack our pride and hide from our own responsibility to think freely for ourselves.

We're an independent label. If you're financially independent, why not make it really mean something? Why not be independent in everything you make, say and do? We're working to live a life we love and believe in wholly, in a world we want to be a part of. Check our fall/winter preview release from our 'All Lines Destroyed' collection that's dropping this week. What do you think? Get in touch, we'd love to hear you and find out how you got here and where you're coming from.

Peace

- K Moto