CUTE

Big thanks to the organisers of Southend City Jam for letting me do the T-shirt design for this years event. Although I couldn’t be there in person, I was able to be there in spirit. Huge props to everyone that painted- some truly staggering works created this year. The UK Graf scene has never looked healthier.

The Native Tongues was a collective of late 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop artists known for their positive-minded, good-natured Afrocentric lyrics, and for pioneering the use of eclectic sampling and jazz-influenced beats. Its principal members were the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep, Monie Love, Queen Latifah, and Chi-Ali. The collective was also closely tied to the Universal Zulu Nation.

The Native Tongues movement inspired later alternative hip-hop artists such as Kanye West, Outkast, the Roots, Lupe Fiasco, Little Brother, Black Eyed Peas, Jurassic 5, Dead Prez, Camp Lo, Jean Grae, Nappy Roots, Digable Planets, Common, Black Star, J Dilla, Lauryn Hill, MF Doom and Pharrell Williams. Rolling Stone cites the track “Doin’ Our Own Dang” as “the definitive Native Tongues posse cut”

“We’re gonna need a bigger BEAT…”

Rest in peace
10 years gone, never forgotten. I miss sharing concepts, colour schemes and production ideas with you. Thanks for all you were 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Family commitments, weather, work and miscellaneous distraction have all conspired to stop me from painting at all this year so far. In the absence of wall, I’ve been settling for the next best thing and the pens have been getting hammered whenever I’ve had the time. I like to think that this slap is my name immersed in lemonade, because any other idea is horrifying. Anyway, V stepped into the arena etc etc

After missing and kvetching about how many things don’t work for me using ballpoints, I’ve been exclusively working in ballpoints. The problem you see is that ballpoints are pretty much the perfect medium. They offer incredible versatility for such a small monetary price that you’d be mad not to try to master them as an artist.
The 20th century offered up some truly catastrophic and world changing events, and brought to centre stage people who did incredible things. But there’s a very good chance that our descendants, if any survive, will look back at this seminal time and see it characterised by the invention of the ballpoint. One of the simplest machines that we use most days, and one of the most life changing. How quickly we forget…