Archive for the ‘Social Upheaval’ Category

B-Girls 4 Life…

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

bee girls

My homie JULIE BEE and her graff grrl crew circa 1985 about to get it in. Please double click the image to see a full size view and study that shit. This chick is so hardbody NYC that you have no idea.

JULIE BURGOS is going hard in the paint for graffiti culture and if you have a few loose shekels I humbly ask you to support her efforts to put the Piecebook project into bestseller status.

Here’s the $20 Amazon link for Piecebook: Reloaded.

While you are at it why not cop the OG Piecebook?

The artwork in the book is more than outstanding. It is historical, dare I say canonical? If that is even a word that is what this book represents featuring the legendary artists that risked life and limb for the fleeting fame of bombing the trains.

My favorite detail in the book wasn’t even one particular artist’s ‘piece’ so much as it was the page they used to illustrate how Design markers would bleed through the page.

There are way too many masterpieces throughout these books. These artists were my heroes like anyone would follow the Batman or Daredevil comicbooks. These graff artists were daredevils for real too.

Respect the architects…

wish

The Beautiful Struggle…

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

afro boricua

TATO TORRES y Yuerba Buena performing at the release party for BOBBITO’s collabo with Pro-Keds. This is the sound of the struggle for freedom and humanity placed onto music. Por Vieques. Por Guantanamo. Por Tierra Madre.

Tato Torres y Yuerba Buena from dallas penn on Vimeo.

With additional commentary provided by 40 Diesel.

Shittin’ On The Competition…

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

pu~

I had to run with this photo of a marathon PU~ because it makes me happy. Dude is so hardbody that he didn’t even slow his roll to drop the meatsauce. Winners stay shittin’ on they competition. I wonder if any other runners stepped in dude’s entrails juice? I discard all my sneakers that have dogziti on the sole. What am I gonna do? Put ’em back in the box?

I’ve been listening to some new music all weekend so I thought I could put it onto another podcast for you to bring with you on your mission today. There’s some rap, rock and funky vibes. Let me know what you think. As always, the Internets Show is a podcast that you created with your friendship at DP.com so salute yourselves onetime.

CheA!

NEAL ADAMS: G.O.A.T. Comic Book Artist

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

neal adams

This is an argument that I don’t mind having with Combat Jack. While he leans towards JACK KIRBY and FRANK MILLER as his top tandem I am an unabashed stan of JOHN BYRNE and NEAL ADAMS.

NEAL ADAMS produced the earliest iconographic comic book artwork that I can remember. It was his work on the Batman that first drew (pun intended) me into comicbooks. Where KIRBY was an artist that was known for giving characters their hyper-musculature ADAMS was more proficient at drawing figures that appeared more lithe and sinewy. In some of the NEAL ADAMS covers Batman appears to be fit more like a swimmer or triathlete.

neal adams

I also believe that ADAMS panel designs were the inspiration for rebel artists like FRANK MILLER. ADAMS drew off the page and across panel frames so that your eyes moved with the characters. MILLER would employ this technique later on during his stint at Daredevil especially when illustrating the movement of DD’s baton. ADAMS took great pride in how he helped move the comics forward from their campy place in culture they had been placed in during the 1960’s.

I caught up with NEAL ADAMS at the MarvelFest 2009 in-store event at Forbidden Planet. ADAMS was jovial and jocular. He wanted to know why I was calling him a GOAT on camera. I explained that it meant I considered him one of the greatest of all time. He was down with that.

neal adams

I asked NEAL ADAMS what was his inspiration to illustrate characters in the manner he chose which seemed more appropriate for a mag like Heavy Metal than for comic books at the time. ADAMS explained how he felt that comics weren’t being given the serious artisitic consideration he thought they deserved. Part of this had to do with the campy programs like the 1960’s Batman TV series which reduced Batman and Robin to a comedy team from being a crime-fighting duo. ADAMS wanted to put that grit back into their stories.

The storylines he collaborated on for the Green Lantern Green Arrow series are by now legendary. Racism, drug abuse and the disenfranchisement of the poor were all part of those issues. His superheroes not only looked real, they acted real. Marvel gets a lot of credit for being the company that portrayed the humanity within their flawed heroes but much of the credit should be given to the artists who were also activists living through this country’s tumult.

neal adams

I talked to ADAMS about his run on the X-Men right before the book went on hiatus. The X-Men comic had never seen artwork like his. ADAMS took us back into the Savage Land and also to do battle with Magneto and the Sentinels. The X-Men title had never had an artist as creative as ADAMS was. He made Marvel Girl the sexiest character in the Marvel pantheon. ADAMS artwork wasn’t enough to save the X-Men book though and he returned to DC Comics to work on Batman and the highly acclaimed GL/GA books.

My favorite part of my interview with ADAMS was when I asked him if Batman really “hit” Rhas Al’Ghul’s daughter Talia. NEAL’s reply was that “Batman definitely hit that, in a good way.” Amen to that NEAL ADAMS.

neal adams

LOSING FOR THE WIN…

Friday, October 30th, 2009

piecebook

I watched a little video featuring Hot97 personality Peter Rosenberg give his opinion on who the web’s content creators were. Rosenberg says “bloggers” are fat cowards living anonymously. That we are fat is a point of note seems incredulous to me since Rosenberg is hardly the body beautiful[ll]. Rosenberg also attempts to invalidate the internets information bringers by remarking as to how we don’t partake of culture in realtime real life. WTF is he talking about? The only reason Jim Jones or Sean Combs know this dude is because he is a liasion to the gatekeepers. Not because he was a trrendseting deejay who broke records and could create blends and mixtapes.

Rosenberg uses the term “blogger” the same way people had originally used the term “nigger”, as a perjorative class distinction.. He is trying to say that the information and opinions of content creators on the web isn’t valuable. Conversely he is also devaluing the viewers and commenters of internets based information. What Rosenberg and others like him fail to see is that bloggers are the writers AND the readers on the internets. There is no passive population that just accepts the bullshit a corporation decides to feed it. People that do the blogs demand more from life and actively pursue the avenues to attain it. Being a blogger requires more than just turning on your radio. As a matter of fact, internets turn off your radio. Turn off that bullshit.

piecebook

Thirty six hours ago I did a classic DP fail and I lost my handycam on the subway. Blame it on the alcohol. My homey from forever Boo Brown sent me an e-mail invite to some ad agency obama on East Broadway. Being the admitted alcoholic I went to the party after just having drinks with the StapleCrops family in the Village. On the way home I fell asleep on the benches and when I jumped up to get on the train that had arrived I was unwittingly lighter. The subway doors closed and that was the last of my handycam. I’m upset about losing the video recorder because it had been a surprise gift from Chocolate Snowflake, but I’m even more upset about losing the two hours of video footage from me at MarvelFest 2009.

There was this little chick dressed up in a Venom/naughty maid costume along with the requisite fishnets who was flirting with me for real. There was also a thick chick who painted herself green and was favoring the She-Hulk costume during John Byrne’s stint. Homegirl had Bahhhdy! The jewels on my tapes were the minutes I spent with my heroes Chris Claremont and Neal Adams. I praised Claremont for the Dark Phoenix saga and I complimented Adams for all of his works and especially his trailblazing techniques. Neal Adams was totally gracious. He is the GOAT.

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So with no digital cameras right now(as of last week the Cybershot is only ‘shot’) I am back to documenting the city with only my pen game, er, actually the Blaxberry for this drop. My little sister from Bklyn Tech JULIE BURGOS hollered at me the other day to make sure I would be in the building for the launch party of CHINO BYI and Sacha Jenkins new graphic graffiti tome ‘Piecebook Reloaded’. I expected the party to be a dope writers re-union but I didn’t expect to see as many heads from Brooklyn Tech HS.

RAB CAC was in the building and more importantly in the book. DOC TC5 was deejaying. RAE ONE, my classmate even made an appearance. RAE was a writer from Red Hook Houses who rolled with CHINO BYI since way back in 1985. He didn’t graduate from BTHS either. Just like me he had bitten off too much of the Big Apple to be caught up in the confines of a school. New York City held too much adventure for us. It still holds endless adventure for me even to this day. The city never sleeps so neither do I. But I do fux with naps.

piecebook

The next spot to rush was the Nokia Theater to catch a show featuring Devin the Dude, Redman and Method Man and headlined by the Doggfather. This would be my first time ever seeing Snoop perform so you already know I was hyped. On my walk to the ‘A’ train I spotted some young white wearing Oakley ski goggles on their heads. They were hipster types that would never pay the pricepoint for those goggles so I immediately knew they were swag from some event. I asked the girl where the Oakley party was going down and then she apologized to me and turned to her friend. He said he didn’t know also. I was heated. Those fuckers knew and I needed to know too.

I have a couple of pairs of Oakley ski goggles in my archives but they go back to 1995 before Oakley was putting the zigga zigga mirrors on the lensplate. I saw some other white holding their goggles in a box so I asked them where the party was at. “Thompson and Watts” is what they offered me. Ha. The Red Bull Space. I was on it. I scurried up to the venue and I tried to finesse my way inside OG style which wasn’t working with Lindsay at the door. No dice and no plutonite goggles for the kid. From this point on I am no longer calling white girls ‘Becky’. They are ‘Lindsay’ from now on, and they have no love for my Black bullshit.

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I got to Nokia Theatre just on time to have a drink with Cool Dave and Drew Ski. All the Raekwon shit I have been doing this year has been through them. Drew had me in the Raekwon interview and Dave put me into the EMI rooftop concert as well as the Santos show and the SOBs victory lap homecoming. Rap labels need to follow EMI’s lead in using the web to promote their artists. EMI gets it enough to let Dave and Drew call the shots. I appreciate that Dave and Drew call on me. You already know what to expect from a Snoop Dogg show and his set didn’t disappoint me one bit. Snoop is clearly one of the top 5 emcees alive in Hip-Hop today. He never spit the illest rhymes but he crafted hits that go way back to ‘Deep Cover’. Snoop did all of his jams too.

For some of the sexier numbers he pulled out a group of dancers that could pop it and drop it like it was… Hot. Snoop was animated and confident when he saw that he had the room in the palm of his hand. He talked his shit while telling us to smoke ours. And we did. The EMI crew threw me an extra ticket so I let my nigga Blaze from the day job rock out with me. I call him Blaze because, well, you should already know. The internets were in the building hardbody for this one. I lost my handycam the day before and there I was winning at my first ever Snoop D-O double gizzle show.

Losing FTW

piecebook
piecebook

Pics courtesy of JulieBee x LeeLo