FAMILY TREES

Ed Piskor’s work is excellent. Hip-hop and comic books don’t always sit together too well (see, Nine Rings of Wu-Tang), but his well-documented work with Fantagraphics to create the Hip-Hop Family Tree — with book #2 having just dropped this week — is a thing of beauty. Taking its sweet time to explore the origins of the culture — significantly more than any hatchet job documentary — with Piskor’s painstaking approach to art and shedding light on the unsung (plus the challenge of filling the gaps to create dialogue and an engaging narrative) and putting out 200 pages to reach 1983, I’m in awe. His dust-addled Russell Simmons needs his own spinoff graphic novel. The forthcoming box set comes complete with an issue #300 that switches appearance to an early 1990s Image aesthetic to look at the connection between comics and hip-hop, as best demonstrated by Spike Lee’s 1991 commercial for Levi’s starring a then red-hot Rob Liefeld. Everyone who looks at this blog will find something to love in this project, if they haven’t already invested in it. While it’s aimed at my generation, I envy any kid picking it up and getting educated without the feeling of being bellowed at by intense old-timers in South Pole denim.

The aforementioned Wu-Tang effort was bad, but their former collaborators Onyx put out something equally weak with their Marvel book Fight back in 1995. We’ve discussed the Jive comics like the 1994 Crustified Dibbs one that came with the promo tape, the Casual and the Extra Prolific editions, but RA has gone on record discussing the effort that his name was attached to and one of the packs was on eBay fairly recently (see below.) Given RA’s encyclopaedic b-movie knowledge, it could’ve been great. This Dream Warriors comic from Canada is also from 1994. Speaking of that strange year for rap funny books, I’ll always defend KRS One’s Marvel Break the Chain “Psychosonic Comic” with Kyle Baker on art, plus an accompanying tape — shouts to Big Joe Krash. Issue #40 of Rock N’ Roll Comics from 1991, covering the career of NWA was a glorious oddity too. Nothing came close to Percy Carey’s Sentences: the Life of MF Grimm until Piskor’s work arrived — both deserve to be on the shelf if you’re a rap trivia fiend. This one-hour interview with Piskor from earlier last year explains a little of this labour of love.

Hip-Hop Family Tree could’ve been abysmal, but it’s one of the best books on the subject ever.

STILL HOLIDAYING

I’m still in NYC so this blog stays barren until I get back at the weekend. Just to prove I’m not dead and that this site hasn’t come to an abrupt halt, here’s a couple of shoe-centric images. My friend and favourite tattooist Mr. BJ Betts broke out these Gucci Tennis from 1988 at the weekend during a road trip to Delaware. He had these dyed black and requested the addition of a ripple sole from Dapper Dan in Harlem during an NYC trip back in the day and rather than retting a resole, that ripple has been glued over the existing unit to give them a running shoe/court/hiker appearance. Nice piece of custom footwear history from Betts’ insane collection and proof that he was stunting very, very hard while I was starting middle school. I miss the days when people engaged in expensive antics like that to avoid wearing the same shoes as the next man.

And continuing my occasional rappers-in-AM95s series, who could forget Onyx in The Source and HHC, promoting their second album in 1995 and acting all sporty for the photographers? Fredro Starr’s metallic windbreaker (which I believe was Polo Sport like Sticky’s hoody) and Air Max combination was this season’s tech-running look way ahead of its time. Interesting departure from automatic weapons and combat boots. He carries the facial expression of a teenager who just found he needs a code to look at porn or death videos on the family Dell desktop though.

ON THE BUSES

I’m on holiday, so I’m taking a holiday from even attempting to make anything in this blog entry particularly cohesive. I forgot it was Wednesday, so I’m just chucking the contents of the tabs on Chrome and what’s in my Gmail up here — I hope it’s sufficient. Anyway, you shouldn’t even be here — you should be on Egotripland reading this piece on the making of the ‘Lil’ Ghetto Boy’ video.

One of the most interesting things I’m currently looking at is Will Robson-Scott (the man behind the lens on ‘Crack & Shine’ 1 and 2) and James Pearson-Howes’s ‘Top Deck’ project with Mother and London clothing brand Utile (all London everything) of images shot from the top deck of London buses. Having spent more hours than I’d liked to have spent gawping from double deckers down at London, the traffic choked leisurely pace has given me some interesting perspectives of the city and the behaviour of those who dwell in it. It’s a shame that I’m usually too irate to appreciate them, but Will and James’s images should resonate with any of us who aren’t stupid or rich enough to attempt to navigate it by car.

Launching as an exhibition downstairs at Mother (Leonard Street) on Thursday and being printed and collated in a newspaper format, ‘Top Deck’ celebrates a ubiquitous but oft-squandered view. Two years of dreary journeys documented is proof that we take our surroundings for granted and if I didn’t only use buses over the underground in a hapless attempt to save time, meaning I’m too agitated to relax and just absorb the overhead view. At least the Routemaster (and the new reworking of it) offers more scope to get lost in a flight of fantasy than the curious tension — of wild-eyed fidgeting loners, screwfacing women having to stand with a pushchair and sweating fare dodgers — that’s present on each and every bendy bus. Go grab the publication here or attend the exhibition and grab it while you’re there, but make sure to check out the tie-in Tumblr.

What could be more British than staring from a bus? How about a mug made to commemorate a UK hip-hop favourite? Like a ‘Fat Lace’ joke made physical, the ‘Serve Tea Then Murder’ mug from Style Warrior sees the makers of tie-in Brit rap merchandise with the nod from the referenced artists and labels shift from cotton to glazed ceramics. It started as forum banter, but now Style Warrior is taking pre-orders on them. Brilliantly at odds with the po-faced, harder than hardcore content of the record, the 1991 Music of Life release provides the no-nonsense imagery and lettering here. Consume enough caffeine from it and you too can be a No Sleep Nigel. While plenty of Britcore releases leave me a little cold in 2012, creations like this hot drink receptacle remind me of the kind of mad merchandise I’ve seen in Tokyo hip-hop outlets over the years.

In fact, the quest for the Sophnet Nike ACG Mt. Fuji jacket from ’07 in an XL led me to hero and all-round nice guy, DJ Muro’s King Inc. site and its Diggermart pages again. But I’ve blogged about them a couple of times before. What caught my eye was the bizarre key charm from Lil ‘ Limo in association with Muro and for Warp Magazine’s birthday last year. ‘Sesame Street’s Elmo in multiple colours with a ‘King of Diggin’ tape and 45 attached? Why the fuck not? Only in Tokyo could something like this exist, yet it sits alongside the Elmo that Raekwon cradled for Supreme, or Agallah’s ‘Crookie Monster’ as a strange piece of Jim Henson hip-hop tie-in. Anyone else remember the official Cookie Monster DJ Muro sweat with the crazed creature munching on vinyl. Nobody got quite as sick with the hip-hop imports as Japan did, and I’m preoccupied with the footage — from the ‘Wild Style’ tour to that eye opening 1994 Yo! episode where Fab 5 Freddy returned and did his awkward language barrier thing to look at amazing record stores, and beyond.

While we’re talking YouTube videos, every Onyx video between 1992 and 2002 is on there as a compilation in cleaned-up quality, plus the Bad Brains CBGB show from Christmas Eve, 1982 in better quality than the hundredth generation VHS look of most hardcore show documents from that era.

And for the sake of it, here’s a Shawn Stüssy interview from ‘Spin’s December 1991 issue. It’s not the most enlightening feature, but it was available and this blog entry’s lacking, so I upped it.