CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 14, 2025--
Today, two of America’s most iconic brands – Kool-Aid and Nike – announce an epic, wall-breaking collab that is sure to mix things up on and off the court. Introducing the Nike x Kool-Aid Ja 2, a one-of-a-kind sneaker collaboration bursting with vibrant colorways inspired by Kool-Aid’s iconic flavors. The partnership blends sneaker culture, self-expression, nostalgia and ultimate comfort—bringing together NBA star Ja Morant’s signature Nike line with Kool-Aid’s spirit of flavor and creativity.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250414992672/en/
Inspired by Ja’s life growing up in South Carolina, he wanted the sneaker colorways to nod to the special memories at his grandma’s house. “I remember my grandma always having some Kool-Aid in the fridge and that’s part of my special childhood memories,” says Morant. Kool-Aid and Nike drew inspiration from Ja’s favorite Kool-Aid flavors to help with the design of the shoe. The result is a collaboration that is fun, colorful and energetic, mirroring Ja’s personality on and off the court.
In addition to Ja’s favorite flavors, the new Nike x Kool-Aid Ja 2 celebrates fans mixing different Kool-Aid flavors to create their own custom blend–currently trending on TikTok with 26MM videos. That same spirit of creativity and expression is what inspired the sneakers' bold colorway and playful details.
The collection will have two drops for fans – the first in May, followed by a second drop in July. The first drop features a mix of performance and personality, with details including:
The July drop will build on the collab with a boldness and freshness that we see Ja bring to the culture of basketball every day. Details include:
“For nearly 100 years, Kool-Aid has been a symbol of bold flavor, creativity and fun – bringing people together across generations,” says Kristina Hannant, Marketing Director for Ready To Drink Beverages at Kraft Heinz. “Nike and Ja Morant share our passion for self-expression and driving culture, making this collaboration a natural fit. We’re always looking for new and exciting ways for fans to celebrate their love for Kool-Aid, and this sneaker collab lets fans mix their kicks and beverages all in one.”
To further celebrate the launch, Kool-Aid is introducing a limited-edition flavor pack, the first new offering from the brand in over five years. The Mix n’ Kicks combo pack lets fans mix and match four of the brand’s most iconic flavors, and taps into the behavior of fans combining flavors to create their own unique drinks blends. In addition to the new offering, select fans can enter to win a set of custom Kool-Aid dubraes and laces to customize their sneakers.
The first Nike x Kool-Aid Ja 2 drops in limited quantities beginning May 16 via the SNKRS app and at select retailers nationwide. Fans can visit the SNKRS app beginning May 2 to sign up for details on the drop and visit www.koolaid.com/mixnkicks to enter to win the flavor pack and accessories. For more information on the Kool-Aid x Nike Ja 2 and to keep up on the drop details, follow @KoolAid @Nike and @JaMorant.
ABOUT THE KRAFT HEINZ COMPANY
We are driving transformation at The Kraft Heinz Company (Nasdaq: KHC), inspired by our Purpose, Let's Make Life Delicious. Consumers are at the center of everything we do. With 2024 net sales of approximately $26 billion, we are committed to growing our iconic and emerging food and beverage brands on a global scale. We leverage our scale and agility to unleash the full power of Kraft Heinz across a portfolio of eight consumer-driven product platforms. As global citizens, we're dedicated to making a sustainable, ethical impact while helping feed the world in healthy, responsible ways. Learn more about our journey by visiting www.kraftheinzcompany.com or following us on LinkedIn.
Kool-Aid and Nike Mix Flavor and Footwear with First-Ever Sneaker Collection Featuring Ja Morant
Kool-Aid and Nike Mix Flavor and Footwear with First-Ever Sneaker Collection Featuring Ja Morant
NEW YORK (AP) — The R&B singer Cassie is being cross-examined after two days of testimony recounting tumultuous details of life with her ex-boyfriend, Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Prosecutors allege Combs used his fame and fortune to orchestrate an empire of exploitation, coercing women into abusive sex parties. His lawyers argue that all the sexual acts were consensual, and although he could be violent, he never veered into sex trafficking and racketeering. Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs’ seven attorneys are led by New York lawyer Marc Agnifilo and also includes Teny Geragos, who has expertise in sexual misconduct cases, and attorney Brian Steel, who represented Young Thug in a lengthy trial before the rapper pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges. Celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, Teny's father, has advised the team. Defense Attorney Anna Estevao led Thursday's cross-examination, making Cassie read her sexually explicit texts out loud for the jury.
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Cassie laughed as Combs’ lawyer showed her an email she sent to Combs near the start of their relationship, almost 18 years ago.
“It’s making me giggle because it’s from 2007,” Cassie said, momentarily breaking the tension of a cross-examination that, so far, has required her to read and hear explicit messages she had exchanged candidly with Combs.
“I know,” Combs’ lawyer Anna Estevao responded. “We’re taking you back.”
Yet more messages read in court show that Cassie was growing frustrated with the state of her relationship with Combs. They weren’t yet public with their courtship, and in a December 2009 email, Cassie told the hip-hop star she needed something more from him than a sexual partnership.
Responding to a sexually explicit email from Combs, Cassie wrote: “I like that. I want it and I want to give you the same. I just think that I have to trust you beyond it just being sexual.”
“Do you know what I mean?” the message continued. “In order for me to be more open with the things we do in bed, I need to feel safe, like home, like this is my husband, and this is THE ONLY man that will ever have this aggressive/sexual side of me.”
Combs’ lawyers are seeking to portray Cassie as a willing participant in Combs’ “freak off” lifestyle.
These communications between Cassie and Combs are graphic — describing for example what she wanted to do during the ‘freak-offs’ — and Estevao is making Cassie read them out loud, word by lurid word, while the lawyer reads Combs’ parts.
The judge is allowing these emails, which don’t discuss what happened, but rather what she was anticipating or wanting to have happen at the time.
After an extensive discussion on what evidence the defense could present, the judge disallowed messages reflecting attempts by Combs to learn whether Cassie was having sex with other men she was dating. So far, these other messages have been within the boundaries set by the judge.
Estevao asked Cassie how many tattoos she had, triggering an objection from prosecutors that was overruled by the judge.
Cassie then revealed that she had three tattoos when she met Combs, including one on the inside of forearm that said: “No Regrets.”
The gentle questioning of Cassie by Estevao may have reached a crescendo when the Combs lawyer was asking her about her early music career and a successful first album.
At one point, Estevao said: “And you’re very beautiful and charming.” Light laughter could be heard in the courtroom, prompting the lawyer to say: “Well, it’s true.”
Cassie responded by thanking her.
The sexual events Combs staged dominated much of the testimony from Tuesday and Wednesday. Now Estevao is asking about the subject and displaying text messages to the jury in an apparent effort to show Cassie’s enthusiasm for them. Estevao is reading Combs’ parts of the email and text exchanges and having Cassie recite what she wrote to him at the time.
— “When do you want to freak off? Lol” Combs asked in August 2009. — “I’m always ready to freak off,” she replied.
Two days later, Cassie sent an explicit message to Combs.
— “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott,” he replied. — “Me Too, I just want it to be uncontrollable,” she said.
But another message Cassie read points to fractures in their relationship, which according to her earlier testimony devolved into violence and Combs’ increasing obsession with seeing her have sex with strangers during drug-fueled sex parties he called “freak-offs.”
In an April 2010 email, she expressed disappointment that Combs would rush her off the phone and wasn’t spending time with her.
Cassie read the email in court: “That’s not being in a relationship with someone that you love and are in love with ... I am really hurt by the way you deal with me, I don’t need your money, I need some attention.”
The defense has Cassie reading out loud from the warm emails and messages she exchanged with the hip-hop star early on. Portraying them to jurors as a loving, caring couple is a counterpoint to two days of testimony about forced sex and violence.
Combs was charismatic, with a larger-than-life personality, she testified. “I had fallen in love with him and cared about him very much,” she acknowledged.
Estevao is confronting Cassie with loving emails and text messages she and the hip-hop mogul exchanged early on, often using Blackberry devices in the era before iPhones.
In one 2008 email, Cassie told Combs she was a lucky woman. “I love you sooo much,” she wrote after Combs thanked her for flying to Atlanta to be with him.
In August 2009, in a message sent when Combs went by the moniker “Puffy,” the rap star told her: “I love you sooooo much it makes me cry.”
Cassie replied: “U hungry pop pop?” She testified that Pop Pop was a nickname she used for Combs, while he sometimes called her Baby Girl. He said no, to which Cassie told him to let her know if he changed his mind.
In April 2010, Cassie told Combs: “Going to sleep now so it can be tomorrow faster and you can be home. Love you!!!” Combs replied: “Love my baby.”
Prosecutors are objecting frequently, and the judge is rejecting many of the objections, appearing to be giving the defense some breathing room in the early stages of its examination.
Estevao has begun by questioning Cassie in a gentle tone of voice. It’s notable because so many cross-examinations can begin with efforts to unsettle and agitate a witness. This approach was the opposite as Estevao began by asking about their relationship. Cassie responded yes to a series of questions.
— “You and Sean Combs were in love for 11 years. You loved him and believed that he loved you as well.”
— “Yes.”
— Your love of Combs explained explained “why it hurt so badly when he lied.”
— “Yes.”
— “When he cheated on you,” Estevao continued.
— “Yes, Cassie said.
Judge Arun Subramanian began Thursday by talking to lawyers about evidence as final ground rules are set before the cross examination by defense attorney Anna Estevao begins.
He denied a request by defense lawyers to introduce text communications between Combs and Cassie that would include references to specific sexual acts.
Letters were filed with the judge overnight from both sides. The judge said he wanted to eliminate “unfair prejudice or victimization” of witnesses.
Prosecutors also complained that overnight Wednesday, defense lawyers dumped 400 “enormous, duplicitous” documents as potential exhibits on prosecutors. A defense lawyer responded that many of the documents will never be offered as exhibits during the cross examination.
There usually aren’t many last minute ground rules to go over for questioning a witness, but lawyers can argue for an hour and stay up until 3 a.m. filing letters over minor facets of law that court observers untrained in legal precedents wouldn’t know or care about. Thursday's discussion went on for nearly an hour. The judge said that with one of his rulings, “99.9 percent of evidence is not being impaired.”
Yes. Combs, 55, has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his September arrest. His formerly jet-black hair is now almost completely gray because dye isn’t allowed at the detention center.
Combs, who had his own fashion line, wore yellow jail uniforms in pretrial hearings. But for the trial, the judge said he can have up to five button-down shirts, five pairs of pants, five sweaters, five pairs of socks and two pairs of shoes without laces.
He interacted with his lawyers but remained largely stoic as Cassie testified on Tuesday. During a break, he made a heart shape with his hands and mouthed “thank you” to one of his twin daughters. He also blew a kiss to his mother.
Under federal court rules, no photos or video of the trial will be allowed. Courtroom sketches are permitted.
She cried several times but for the most part remained composed and matter-of-fact as she talked about some of the most sensitive subjects anyone could imagine expressing, in a courtroom packed with family and friends of Combs, journalists and one row of spectator seats occupied by Cassie’s supporters.
Cassie is in the third trimester of pregnancy with her third child with personal trainer Alex Fine. They married in 2019 and she sued Combs in 2023.
Defense lawyers have indicated that the cross examination of Cassie that will begin this morning will likely be finished by the end of Friday’s court session.
▶ Read more about the life and career of Cassie
The trial is in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian. He’s a Columbia Law School graduate who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was appointed a federal judge by President Joe Biden in 2022.
The prosecution team consists of eight assistant U.S. attorneys, seven of them women. They include Maurene Ryan Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. She was among the prosecutors in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
Combs’ team of seven attorneys is led by New York lawyer Marc Agnifilo, who along with his wife Karen Friedman Agnifilo, is also defending Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Also on the defense team is Atlanta attorney Brian Steel, who represented Young Thug in a trial that went on for nearly two years before the rapper pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges.
Defense lawyers say they’ll be scrutinizing how infidelity fueled the combustible nearly 11-year relationship between the R&B singer and the music mogul who controlled her career.
Defense attorney Teny Geragos suggested yesterday during a discussion between lawyers and the judge that the gameplan for today was changing on the fly out of necessity.
She didn’t get into particulars but she told Judge Arun Subramanian that the questioning of Cassie by prosecutors over two days “has gone much differently than I expected.” She added: “So we are kind of changing our strategy.”
Agnifilo later told the judge that questioning Cassie about infidelities is important. “Everybody knows that we are going to bring up infidelities, that we’re going to want to bring up text messages of infidelities, and these text messages are often in colorful language,” he said.
After the jury was sent home for the day, lawyers squabbled over ground rules for the cross-examination of Cassie, which is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT Thursday.
Agnifilo said infidelity would be the featured subject of the questioning that is expected to stretch until day’s end Friday.
“We have worn our defense on our sleeves since the first bail hearing,” Agnifilo said. “Everybody knows we are going to bring up infidelity and text messages of infidelity.”
Cassie sued Combs in 2023 alleging years of rape and abuse. The suit was settled within hours, but was followed by dozens of similar legal claims and touched off a criminal investigation.
A singer, actor, dancer and model, Cassie’s professional ambitions began in adolescence, when she signed to the top-tier talent and modeling agency Wilhelmina. Her music career launched shortly thereafter, when she left her home state of Connecticut for New York, where she signed with manager Tony Mottola and first met Combs.
Cassie met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37. He signed her to his Bad Boy Records label and, within a few years, they started dating.
▶ Read more about Cassie
FILE - Cassie Ventura, left, and Sean "Diddy" Combs appear at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating "China: Through the Looking Glass" in New York on May 4, 2015. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
Cassie Ventura, right, walks out of the courtroom past Sean Diddy Combs after testifying in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Cassie Ventura wipes tears from her eye while testifying in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
FILE - Cassie Ventura, left, and Sean "Diddy" Combs, arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story" at the Writers Guild Theater, June 21, 2017, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP File)
