Nate Avis grew up in the hip-hop mecca of Chicago and moved to Denver in 2014. Once here, he had a hard time finding local rappers. But after making some connections, in 2017 he started a blog called Jiggy Hip-Hop and began writing about talent that other outlets were ignoring. Through the blog, Avis established himself as part of the local hip-hop community.
Now he s taking his work championing Denver s best to another level by launching a series of collectible rapper trading cards. I ve collected sports cards and when I was a kid, Pokémon cards and stuff for pretty much two decades now, Avis says. Being a huge fan of hip-hop, there was never a collectible product that was similar to a baseball card or a Pokémon card. So just as an art project, originally, I re-created old Topps baseball card designs, and instead of having the baseball players on there, I would put famous rappers like Tupac.