The Reebok G-Unit G6 Came Back With a Letter From 2003

Reebok sent Mike Guillory a pair of the returning G-Unit G6, and the shoe was the least interesting thing in the box. Alongside it sat a printed note written in the voice of 50 Cent in 2003, packaged with instructions not to open it until 2050. It is a seeding gimmick. It is also better storytelling than most brands manage on a retro, and it points straight at the part of this release worth examining, which is how little of the G-Unit sneaker story anyone can actually verify.

The note opens by saying it was meant to stay sealed until 2050, and that if you are opening it early, then whatever is inside was needed sooner than expected. Then it drops into 2003. The album is out, the music is everywhere, and a deal with Reebok has just been signed. Mike reads it out on camera. The conceit works because it puts the shoe back into a specific moment instead of selling it as a generic throwback, and because 2003 really was that moment.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ released February 6, 2003 and went to number one. The RIAA’s own certification database has it at nine times platinum, certified February 24, 2020. That number holds up when you go looking for the paperwork, which is worth saying plainly, because most of what gets repeated about the G-Unit era does not. The line launched under Reebok’s Rbk sub-label, the same push that produced Jay-Z’s S. Carter, and the G6 was its flagship. Past that, the familiar figures come apart under any weight. The five-year, twenty-million-dollar contract. The eleven percent jump in Reebok footwear sales. The claim that the G6 outsold the S. Carter six to one, and the eighty million dollars 50 Cent has said he made from the relationship. All of it traces back to interviews and retrospectives rather than to Reebok, and Reebok has never confirmed any of it. Even the original G6 retail price, usually given as eighty dollars, rests on a single source. Nobody has published when or why the deal ended either.

The 2026 return is a single colorway, the original white, blue and red. Reebok lists it at style code 100289469 for $130, built from a blend of leather and suede on an ice rubber outsole. The brand’s own copy leans on updated materials rather than promising a strict one-for-one remaster, which is honest, and it also means anyone expecting the exact 2003 build should study the photos. The proportions are the reason to care. The G6 was a chunky mid from a period when Reebok was still willing to build a basketball-adjacent shoe with real volume to it, and that shape has aged into something the current market keeps asking for.

Reebok is not the company that made the original. Authentic Brands Group owns the intellectual property, Galaxy Universal and Batra Group handle product creation and sourcing, and Todd Krinsky runs the brand as president and chief executive. That structure is a large part of why Reebok’s retro program has become the most dependable thing about it. There is no in-house design agenda competing with the archive for calendar space. The G6 also fills a gap nobody else can fill, because the 2003 hip-hop sneaker deal is a period Nike and adidas were largely absent from and Reebok’s catalog from those years has no equivalent. No prior G6 retro appears anywhere between 2003 and now, which makes this the first real test of whether that audience is still standing. Reebok has run the same play before with the Ice Cream Board Flip.

$130 sits where retro basketball mids sit right now, and the market answered quickly. Reebok’s own product data currently carries the shoe as both in stock and sold out, with two of twenty-one size runs still available, a US 3.5 and a US 14. That is a launch that cleared straight through the middle of the size run and left the edges behind. Stock has been reported remaining at Snipes and Extra Butter after Reebok.com went thin.

The Reebok G6 returned August 20 in white, blue and red at $130, style code 100289469. Reebok’s own store metadata timestamps the listing to August 21, one day off the date the press coverage carried, most likely a publishing artifact rather than a contradiction. It went out through Reebok.com and select retailers. Mike’s full unboxing sits on the Sneaker History channel above, and his Reebok Phase Evo piece covers where the brand is pointing next.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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