Good Life Project - The Evolution of an Artist | Cey Adams

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

Cey Adams, a New York City native, emerged from the legendary downtown street art movement to eventually exhibit alongside fellow artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and others in galleries, private collections and museums around the world. Along the way, Adams served as Creative Director for Def Jam Recordings, where he co-founded the Drawing Board, the label’s in-house design agency, creating visual identities, album covers, logos, and advertising campaigns for Run DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., Maroon 5, and Jay-Z. Adams draws inspiration from 60’s pop art, vintage sign painting and comics. His work focuses on themes including pop culture, brand identity, cultural and community issues.You can find Cey Adams at: Instagram | Website | Facebook-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Say Adams, he grew up in New York City during this amazing time when graffiti ruled the subways, hip hop and new wave were kind of changing the face of music and converging with the downtown punk and like studio art meets street art scene. And as a lover of music and an artist from a young age, Say found himself at the center of it all, making a name first as a graffiti artist around the city and then becoming a part of that legendary downtown art scene that included people like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and so many others. And along the way, he ended up kind of becoming fast friends with the members of Beastie Boys, started creating all of their designs for their

merch, their promos, and eventually even their iconic graffiti logo. And that launched, say, into the world of hip hop, where he became creative director of Def Jam's in-house design department and helped design the visual identities of so many of hip hop's biggest names over the years. And since leaving that world, he has embraced a blend of commercial work designing for many of the world's most iconic brands, and also really deepening into the fine art world with his work now in private collections, galleries, institutions, museums, including places like the Smithsonian, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, and so many others. He's also co-authored Definition, The Art and Design of Hip

Hop, Designed Def Jam Recordings, The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label. So excited to share Say's infectious energy and passion and just his powerful pop art style and so many of the behind the scenes stories that have defined his truly remarkable and incredible career and life. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. I knew you were going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So much fun for me to be able to sit down with you because there are so many different moments I want to touch down in. It's like you've lived so many different,

it's all part of the same story, but there are a whole bunch of really big subplots. I appreciate you saying that because I'm certainly at a point now where I can see it. And for so often I was sort of just doing whatever I was doing and not really, you know, really taking stock of it. And now I'm at a point where I can sort of, while I'm still working, I can look at it and go, oh, wow, I didn't know that was going to happen.

Oh, man, look at so-and-so, you know. And to feel like you've had a connection to that, and to some degree you can take a little bit of ownership because you helped to shape the direction that some of these people's work went in. Yeah, I mean, that's got to be a bit, on the one hand, really cool, on the other hand, a bit trippy and weird. Yeah, but it's sort of the only life I know.

But there are definitely moments where I sort of wake up and I look at how far certain people have come. And I could use LL Cool J as an example and think, man, I'm really proud of that guy. Because the guy I knew as a 16- old kid was a different guy. I mean, same amount of energy, but you know, when everybody's at the starting gate, you sort of, you can't even imagine how far you can go because nobody's done anything yet. Especially at the starting gate. Cause, and we'll circle back to this. We'll fill in a whole bunch of stuff, but the starting gate, when it's not just that individual starting gate, but it's like an entire genre of music or art. The whole thing wasn't even defined at that moment.

It's the person's identity and their trajectory, but it's also, there is no path to follow yet because it's like you're starting it. Yeah, I think about that very often, that there is no blueprint. And part of it feels like it's really great to be a New Yorker and to come from New York. And you think about all of these amazing bands that started here, whether it's Blondie, Talking Heads, Madonna had to come here to make it. Run DMC, Beastieie Boys LL Cool J Public Enemy APND De La Soul you know it's just it's really unimaginable and it was before scenes started bubbling in other cities so you couldn't go oh something hot has happened in Seattle. Hadn't happened yet.

Oh, look what's going on in the West Coast. Hadn't happened yet. But New York is one of those places. Yeah, it was kind of magical. Let's take a step a little bit back, and then we're going to jump into that a little bit more. Originally from Queens. Correct. Jamaica, Queens.

Mom was a nurse. Dad a butcher. But it seems like you're, were you exposed to art really young, or was it just in you, there was something in you that kind of like was gravitated towards it? You know, I have been an artist as long as I can remember. I honestly don't have a memory before I could make stuff. But an actual interest in art, I would say I got what everybody else got when they went to a museum in school. It wasn't like some light bulb went off. It was just,

you know, it's like when people are giftedly talented musicians, it's just there. And, you know, one day, you know, you start making something and all of a sudden you're like, oh, you're a little bit better than, you know, Johnny or, you know, Katie. And then all of a sudden you look up and you're a representative for your school. And then somebody compliments you and you start to get a little bit of support. And then all of a sudden you think, okay, maybe there really is something here. And I knew that from the time I was like, you know, seven, eight years old. Was it curious about the people who compliment you or the people who sometimes touch down,

especially when people are really young and in a way validate, like there's something here, you like keep with it? Well, you know, it's funny. I got that at the grade school level i'm not kidding and then by the time i got to junior high school and high school it disappeared so that's a fourth grade teacher giving you reassurance that you can do something your folks might look at and go but they but they're not nobody's going to tell somebody that young that they can be an artist it's the last thing people want for you

especially growing up in the 70s in New York people look at New York now and they're like oh great city the 70s in New York not a good time no nobody wanted that for their kid any background like being an artist is like you might as well just, you know, go straight to the soup

line. By the time I get to junior high school, all of that sort of went away. And I didn't go to an art school. I didn't go to an art high school. I went to Jamaica High. It was a regular high school where you get the same amount of encouragement as everybody else doing everything else. And I really remember at the time, some of the kids in my school, they wanted to start dabbling with being rappers and DJs and all of it. And I remember

one of the deans saying, oh, you're interested in that talking musical thing. I don't think that's such a good idea. And so hearing that person shooting down my friends, I knew I wasn't going to get any encouragement if I wanted to be an artist. And this really predates graffiti and all of it. It was just adults just really didn't offer much support at all. I mean, because when we think about graffiti,

right, you're going to know this a lot better than I am. I mean, I know like a decent amount of us are like the history of hip hop and how so much of it

really truly did come from New York, like from the Bronx down and from Hollis in. Right. Graffiti, graffiti has always seemed to me like it was a largely a York-based thing also,

sort of like starting with like, you know, like Taki and, you know, like Fab Five Freddy, like late 60s, even early 70s. You know, I've been told that it started in Philadelphia and I'm not in a position to debate it. But I will say that

even if it started in Philadelphia, it exploded in New York. And it's just one of those things where I wasn't interested in learning about the history of it, even when I was a teenager. I sort of just, it was, you know, I was describing it to a friend like, it's like seeing somebody taking a tag to me and watching the ink sort of dripping down. It was like looking at a cool kid with a leather jacket on

and a T-shirt rolled up smoking a cigarette. It's like, wow, that guy is cool. And you just want to be a part of that. Not that I ever felt like I got that rush when I did that, but that was sort of my mind, what it looked like when I tried to articulate somebody else. It was like, you know, Fonzie, you know, he was undeniably cool. That's funny. I mean, it's interesting also, because that was, that was also a time, I mean, like, now like people look at it and they're like, oh, it's street art and everyone's calling it something different.

And it's sort of like been oddly gentrified and there are different terms for it. But, you know, back in the day, in the 70s especially, this was a is that it is high art and it is still vandalism. and showing in museums and selling in galleries. There's some kid that is 15 and wants that same rush that I had when I was a kid, and that is not fine art. And that's the misconception that people have about graffiti is that it's that and it's that. It's not just one of them. And a lot of people can't make the distinction because,

you know, maybe they only are exposed to the vandalism aspect of it. A couple of years ago, we had Chris Ellis, you know, goes by days, who I guess was kind of your contemporary. Sure. We came up together. Yeah. And I remember him telling me, you know, because I was asking him, like, what was it for you? Because he's one of, like you, he's one of the few guys who actually broke out and ended up, you know, he's now in galleries and museums and he's on the fine art side. And I was like, what in the early days, like, what, and what was it about? I

mean, was it the, was it the expression side of it was, and he had a really interesting answer. I'm curious, like what, what comes up for you? And he was like, you know, yeah, it was all that. He's like, but it was like, he's like, we were in this one part of the city and because we were all, you know, like we were riding on trains, it was almost like a form of communication. It's like, we, we put a message on, you know, like on a, on a subway car and we'd like, we'd send it out to Queens. And it was like this way that the boroughs could communicate with each other. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was always a means to an end.

It was about wanting to be seen and wanting to be heard. And I mean that literally. We wanted people to value what we were doing. We were artists. If you talk to most of the people that were graffiti artists from the generation that I come from, when they were in grade school, they were an artist

before they knew anything about graffiti. So, you know, graffiti becomes your identity, but the reality is if you have the ability to paint, that doesn't come from graffiti. If you can do to paint, that doesn't come from graffiti. If you can do portraiture, that doesn't come from graffiti. You might learn things along the way. But the reality is if you are an artist, that's in you before you're introduced to graffiti.

Also curious about there's the artist side of it. Okay. So, so effectively trains, walls, places all over the city become your momentary canvas, right? Like this is just the place that you express things. And at the same time, for at least a window of time, it also seems like a real, this is sort of like our way to express anger to express like our stance about authority and to make a bigger statement also yeah when i was a teenager i don't know that i had the ability to articulate that with a magic marker but i do know that i wanted people to recognize that what i did had value and by the time I started making paintings on canvas, I was able to do that. But when I was painting subway trains, it was just

painting subway trains and, you know, bigger is better. You know, look, mom, there's my name, you know, look, dad, there's my name, you know, that sort of thing. It's just wanting people to know that you exist and that you are this small person and you can do this giant thing. And I think that that's something that a lot of graffiti artists share. And I think that now, if you look at the street art movement, that's why people are painting these murals bigger and bigger and bigger because the availability is there. The people that own the buildings understand that these people are capital A artists and they have the ability to do it. And there's a platform to show the work. And now you have this global network of people that are all like-minded. But to me, it's the same thing as the young kid painting graffiti on the train. And then they go from painting under the windows to doing a top to bottom, to doing a whole car, to doing multiple cars, or painting a full handball court.

I think it's all connected. Yeah. Who was the crew that was like there was a legendary, like they painted like 10 cars all at once. Was that like Fab Five and Canones and those guys? Yeah, exactly. It was Lee and the Fabulous Five. And that was sort of the thing is that after a while,

yeah, you just have to continue to one-up your contemporaries because when there's that many people doing the same thing, you're really just trying to stand out in the crowd. You mentioned, like, look, Mom, look, Dad, did your folks have any idea what was going on? Oh, sure. I shared a room with my two brothers. And if you've ever smelled spray paint and ink... Yeah, it's not easy to hide.

Yeah, you can't fool anybody. And that was back when the paint was much, much stronger. But you sort of pretend that it's just limited to your bedroom and you're not doing anything out in the street. But they got hip to it pretty quickly. Yeah. So you're doing this and that kind of takes you into high school also. At some point, I mean, it sounds like you also, and there's interesting stuff happening in the city around that time also, right?

So you're sort of like coming out, you're 18-ish. You make a decision somewhere around there also, like let me actually see what would happen if I did some formal education. Yeah, but, you know, while I understood the value of it, I didn't think that it was just sort of, you know, you're either going to do that or you're going to get a job. And, you know, I didn't think that making art was going to be something that I was going to be able to do right away. But I did have this crazy idea in the back of my mind that I was going to be an artist, even though I didn't know what that looked like.

I just knew that it was something that I came downtown and I started hanging out in the West Village and the East Village with other people that were like-minded, beyond the people that I wrote graffiti with. Because while they were great and a lot of fun to hang out with, when I came downtown, I met musicians. And I met, we'll just say traditional artists for the, you know, purpose of distinction. And that was when I realized that I was a part of a really unique club of misfits because, you know, they were all rebels, whether they were musicians or they tended bar, they didn't want to wear a suit and tie to earn a living. And that was the way that you made the distinction in New York from music and art were kind of coming together, and people weren't duking it out. It was like a love fest, and there was all this amazing collaboration. to where I lived in Jamaica, Queens, the West Village, downtown, Greenwich Village, all of that was a million miles away. The same way if you live in the suburbs and you go to Times Square,

it's different. And that was one of those things that I understood immediately. But when you're that young and you're that impressionable, you just want to be near the action. And it was like electricity. Even if we were eating pizza and falafels and hot dogs as a steady diet, but you just wanted to be around it. And once I went downtown, I never wanted to go back to Queens. I would stay out for days. And my folks literally would just wonder

if I was dead until I called the house and hoped that one of my brothers or sisters would pick up and I just said they heard from me but I definitely wouldn't want my folks to get on the phone because then it was like if you're not dead you're going to be dead

when you get home but that also speaks in part to what else was going on in that part of the city in the 80s, which is like that was the height of the crack epidemic. And that area especially, like East Village, Alphabet City, was sort of like ground zero for it. So in the middle of this amazing music and art was also this super intense drug scene. Well, you know, I remember it a little differently. Like, you know, coming from Queens, I remembered everybody that I knew and loved was hooked on, you know, drugs in some sort of way.

And, you know, not that I'm patting myself on the back, but I honestly believe that I don't know what it was about who I was that saved me from getting trapped in, you know, like that wave or drugs and alcohol or even, you know, like a life of crime, like whatever it is. I've just always been an artist and that's all I ever cared about. But at that point, so many of my friends had gotten hooked and it was just, you know, they were like zombies. I mean, literally zombies. And, you know, when you're young, you sort of don't understand the larger picture and all you see is the devastation. But it ripped through so many households, myself included. I had brothers and sisters that got caught up in it and thank God they found their way out without getting too beat up, but it really took some people completely out.

Yeah, it was that classic line, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It seemed like that embodied everything. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk you also i mean you mentioned you know you you started hanging out a bit more with sort of like more, quote, traditional artists. You know, the names that have been bandied about that were sort of like part of a crew of people you ran with, people like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Bascot, and Warhol. You know, it's interesting, Haring to me, because I remember, like there was a, people think of him as this incredible pop artist.

There was a time where you could walk in a New York City subway and there'd be a torn up piece of black felt paper marked up with just something really cool. And you'd learned a couple years down the road. Now, he was just doing that all over the subway. Sure, yeah. You know, it this day, when I see one of his subway chalk drawings in a museum or in a gallery, it makes me cringe because I know Keith never wanted that stuff to be considered as his fine art. That was stuff that he did for the public the same way people take a tag on a building outside. If you rip that brick wall out and you put it in a museum, it changes the meaning behind it because the intention lives with the artist. And that was the city at that time.

It was just, it was really raw and everybody was trying to figure out who they were and trying to create opportunities for themselves. And it was so much fun. And looking back, we all needed so much less. So when I think about even myself, the diet that I was on, like I said, it was basically a diet of fast food. I crashed at somebody's couch, somebody's floor, whatever it took. You didn't place a lot of value on those things.

It was all about being in close proximity to where the action was and the clubs, the art scene. Yeah. I mean, there also, it seems like that everything was about the scene. I mean, it was about the art and it was about the scene. And there, I mean, all the other, so many characters who weren't, you know, the artists there. Yeah. But they were the hosts and the hostess and the people who brought people in. You had the fun gallery and Patti Astor and all these people

that were, if you're like, what was their job? And you're like, creating the container to a certain extent? The job was to make something happen. Last week I was in Miami for Art Basel and I saw Arthur Baker, the producer. I hadn't seen Arthur Baker in years.

Explain who. Well, Arthur Baker was a producer, and he was responsible for, he worked with Afrika Bambaataa. More recently, he worked with New Order. But he worked with everybody. And to some degree, he worked with Rick Rubin and the Beastie Boys as well. And he was a fixture on the scene at that time. But he was arguably a more contemporary version of Phil Spector. Arthur Baker was a really well-respected producer. And this is before Rick

really establishes himself, meaning Rick Rubin, as a massive producer. Arthur Baker was that guy at the time. And so we're at this gallery. It was actually the opening of the new Graffiti Museum in Miami. And I designed the logo for the museum graffiti museum in Miami. And I designed the logo for the museum. And so I was there lending my support. And, you know, and I see Arthur Bacon, he looks exactly the way he did then, only just an older version.

And we just have the best time talking, not just about the good old days, but, you know, what we're doing now. But he was one of those people that knew everybody, was in the mix, and was doing really interesting work. But, you know, people didn't take themselves quite as seriously back then, because everybody was just doing what they enjoyed doing. And also they were, you know, partying and hanging out and just really absorbing the energy of being young in downtown where you could do anything you there, do you recall having a sense for just wanting to really get the most out of every day or having a sense for like, there's something out there that I'm working towards? Always, you know, for me, first and foremost, it was always, who am I going to meet that's going to help push my agenda forward? You always thought, oh, it's going

to be some rich patron or club promoter because, or, you know, somebody that, you know, runs a major business that's going to, you know, come on board and finance a project because that's how things happened. You know, if you look at what happened with Studio 54, that was sort of the idea. You needed somebody to help support what you were doing. And while there was a lot of competition amongst my peers, we were all sort of a dysfunctional family because we all came from some other place to be in this place.

And we all had the same goal in mind. We wanted to make work, whether you were a musician or a producer or a rapper or a DJ or a break dancer or an artist. It was just about trying to figure out how you were going to get to where you were going. Yeah. And it seemed like there was this moment also where all of those people were mingling in the same rooms with people who would have a decade earlier been patrons of quote, fine art. And all of a sudden, I mean, maybe to a certain extent it was a fun gallery

that kind of like started that whole trend because it feels like there are a bunch of graffiti slash street art galleries that started to pop up around the city. But that was the one where you would see, you know, you'd have guys who are out the night before tagging around the city and then socialites showing up all in the same place and kind of just jamming together. Well, you know, that's one of the things that hip hop, urban culture, and even to some degree, you know, maybe a little less punk because I don't really remember, you know, people from high society sort of mingling on the punk scene as much.

That was so contrary to what punk was about. Yeah, yeah. But they were definitely on the hip hop scene. And certainly they were, you know, around graffiti artists. I think a lot of it was, you know, to them, it was interesting and it was a lot of fun. You know, to us, it was survival. But to them, you know, this was, you know, recreation.

This was, you know, an interesting way to hang out with the cool kids. And to some degree, you know, if they bought work or if they supported, you know, an artist or two, you know, good for them. Because at the end of the day, you know, my parents weren't buying paintings. And I'm sure a lot of my friends, folks didn't really understand the value of what they were doing either. And so a patron is a patron. Yeah, everyone wins at the end of that day. At some point, it sounds like you never lose your focus on art.

That has always been the through line for everything. But there are things that get added to that for serious chunks. And one of them is music, a deep dive into the sweet spot between music and art. Tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you meeting and then becoming fast friends with Adam Horowitz, who would eventually, who was one of the Beastie Boys back then, was one of those really catalytic moments.

Well, I certainly, I knew who the Beastie Boys were before I started hanging out with them. And it was hanging out with them and then working with them. But, you know, before it had a name, I was listening to college radio back in Queens. And so I was familiar with alternative music. Well, I guess that was the name. But before it even, you know, had the term new wave. So, you know, bands like the Talking Heads and the Smiths and, you know, Depeche Mode and Cure, and all of it. Before those bands really broke big, you would hear them on alternative radio at the end of the dial. W-L-I-R.

Right, right. And so I would listen to stations like L.I.R., and that's how I would learn about these bands. And the place that those bands played were places like Dance Terrier, Maxis Kansas City, the Mud Club. And so that informed a lot of how I got my musical education. I mean, aside from jazz and traditional rock and roll and all of it. But that's where those people hung out. And so I had this, you know, natural love for the music,

and it sort of just informed a lot of other things that I learned about when I was downtown. But meeting Adam and the rest of the guys in the Beasties, it was very similar to the way I met graffiti artists. You know, you're on the street, you run into people, you have a conversation, you're about the same age, so you already have that in common. You are interested in, you know, rebel culture, you know, because you're there. And none of these things had names at the time.

You know, this even predates hip hop having a name. But you realize that you share that common, you know, value for loving, you know, an art form, whatever it is, whether it's graffiti, you know, or making music, and you just click. And that's what happened with Adam and the guys. We clicked, and we were together every day because we loved doing the same things. They loved making music, I loved making art, and we loved hanging out. How does it go from just becoming fast friends

and hanging out and making art and making music together to making that transition to sort of like there's business between us? Because that can get funky for a lot of people. Yeah. You know, I think the thing that helps a lot is that we didn't think of it as business. It was my friends are in a band. My friends have a baseball cap that needs graphics on it.

Oh, I can do that. And because there was nobody else there that was doing that, I did it. And so that was sort of in my mind how it happened. Oh, we have to do a photo shoot. Oh, let me do a piece of the band's name behind you. It was really organic. And those are the early years before there's real money exchanging hands. It's, oh, we need two cans of paint. It's not the way things are now where you'd have to involve a whole army of people to get something done. It was a bunch of kids sort of banding together the way the little know, the little rascals did. And you're just

sort of having a good time and you have each other's backs. They do a show, get a couple of bucks. We go to White Castle. Everybody's going to eat. The money goes to burgers and gas. They're done. Right. It's almost like it's going into a collective pool so we can all just keep doing what we want to do. Yeah. Yeah. Part of that early collaboration though, is you, I mean, creating pretty much everything they need from t-shirts to hats to flyers, but also their logo. Yeah. You know, which is interesting because that, that has become one of the most iconic logos in the genre. I'm very fortunate in that regard that I worked with so many people that had a unique vision.

I never really thought about it before. All of these people that come from New York City that have this crazy dream that they're going to make it big, and then they make it big. And then all of those things that you did to assist them become equally important. And that was something that I still marvel at that because I didn't see

any of that coming. You sort of just, you do these things and you put them to the side or they go out there and they live on their own and they start to breathe. And then their fans get a hold of it and they start to embrace a lot of these graphics and logo designs and things. And it's almost like it has a life independent of you. Around this same time, so you're starting to do a lot more with them. This is also, you mentioned earlier, Rick Rubin, who now is this legend in the space. He and Russell Simmons end up co-founding Def Jam Records right around that same time, right? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it all happened at the same time because we were all together. Granted, I knew Russell before Rick and the Beastie Boys when he had a management company before they formed Def Jam. And I was designing things for artists that he managed. And again, it's the same thing. It's tour backdrops, T-shirts, posters, flyers, anything that had a logo or needed a name or some sort of branding. I did all of that.

But it was always because there was nobody else there interested in doing it. And it was, you know, I didn't have any competition. You know, making art was just, you know, it might as well have been a foreign language to them. You're also, it's like you're stepping, you start out as a kid, you love art, you love comic comic books you get involved in graffiti then you move into sort of like the downtown scene where you're hanging out with a whole crew of people that are really kind of bridging the gap between progressive conceptual abstract

and and street art and then you move it into music it's like you're bringing all of that there but you're also adding this element of graphic design, which is a whole different world. Well, the thing that I understood immediately was that graphic design was a studied skill. Graphic design was a trade. And while I didn't really understand that part of it, what I did understand was that I had a graphic sensibility in the graffiti work that I did. And so I realized that I could take that and apply that to something a little bit more practical. I did have to learn how to do technical, you know, traditional paste up with the X-Acto knife and ruler and, you know, rubies and all of it and blue lines. But once I learned that, you could apply that to anything. You could work for a magazine. You could do book design.

You could really go on to have a real career, especially if you didn't care about the type of design that you did. You know, the door was wide open. But for me, making albums, you know, I didn't know how albums were made. Like, you know, the way you hear people, you know, talk about how film was done, it was like magic. And you sort of take a lot of these things for granted as a kid. And then when you learn these skills, you realize that you the transition to fine art, some of them got picked up by galleries and some of them went off to Europe and then some of them just stopped altogether because without drive and determination and support, a lot of people just, you know, they couldn't weather the storm during those lean years. And by meeting Russell and Rick and those guys,

it gave me a whole nother avenue so I could leave all of that behind and embrace this new career, you know, like with both feet and really focus. Yeah, it's interesting because as you're saying that, I'm like, that makes so much sense. And had you come from sort of more of a traditional art background, no doubt people would have been like, oh man, like he's selling out.

But it's so fascinating because you came from this place where people were giving away their art to the public. Then you got guys like Warhol, who I know you were hanging out with for a bit, where he didn't hide the fact. He's like, hell yes. I'm like, I'm going completely commercial. I'm making a lot of money doing it. And it's like, it almost like gave you this sort of like green light.

What we came from making it was making it. You know, selling out is a mentality that was manufactured by people that were, you know, like the people that came up with the term keeping it real. Like that doesn't mean anything. and turn it into something that you could physically hold in your hand, whether it was cash or a contract or something that could help sustain you, that was not a bad thing. And I say this very often, that when people talk about how similar hip-hop and punk are, they are very similar in their rebellious nature. But if you've ever seen a kid sitting on the sidewalk

with a sign and a dog, you never see anybody in hip-hop doing that because hip-hop is aspirational. They're trying to change their circumstances. And that's what it's all about. How do I take this thing that I've stumbled upon, master it and perfect it and put it out there in the world so I can, you know, earn a living and change my circumstances and maybe even, you know, do something for my family.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable

on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. So you find yourself, in relatively short order, basically heading up design for Def Jam and working with all of these artists. And like we were talking about earlier, some of them had started to break pretty big.

But then you have guys like LL Cool J, who's kind of like at the very, very early stage. But I mean, the people that you had the opportunity to sit there and be a part of the creative vision with, I mean, like Biggie in the early days, Public Enemy when they were sort of like in the early days. Just the list of people, so curious for you, because you show up and you have a certain creative sensibility. Right. And you have a vision. But they, as the musicians and the creators, they have their own vision and their own sensibility. How was that, sort of like you coming together and trying to bring those into alignment. You know, sometimes it was easy if they didn't have a strong opinion about the visual side of what they were doing.

And then, you know, for the most part, it was always like trying to take a bad idea and present it in the best possible light. And you always got lucky if they didn't have any idea as well. You know, like if they didn't have any idea at all about what the visual aspect was beyond, okay, I know that I want to photograph of myself on the cover. My job is always to help them articulate what they were trying to say in a visual perspective. But it wasn't always easy because sometimes they were really stubborn about what they wanted. And there was no, how do I put this in a way that sort of... Okay.

It was just, sometimes the ideas are just plain old bad but they're really passionate about it and and so you know i can think of so many things but the artists aren't famous so you know it sort of doesn't you know lend itself to great storytelling if you you know your listeners and don't know who the artist is. But the goal was always to help them realize what the visual side of what they were doing looked like. But certainly there were moments where you're working with Public Enemy or LL Cool J and they have a much clearer vision and it made it much easier

because not only did you have to execute the idea, you had to sell it to everybody else at the company. And while when you talk to a lot of record executives, they will pretend that they were on board with every amazing visual idea. But the reality is that very often people had very lean and narrow approaches to commercial art because everything was about marketing and sales. And so in order to sell the record, you have to have the image of the artist on the front cover.

No, you don't. And they never really wanted to take a page out of the rock and roll book because they sort of thought of that as something completely different than what they were doing. And for me, I always knew that it was very similar. And my idea was I wanted to elevate what we were doing because I didn't want it to look like traditional R&B just because it was black music. I wanted to do something that rivaled these amazing album covers that all of these rock bands were doing. But that was a difficult sell because it always starts with something conceptual. I mean, this was also, because Def Jam in the early days was, they were distributed

through like one or two. Columbia. Right. So you not only need to get sign off from the artists and from Def Jam which are younger more progressive more edgy they understand more

what the music is about but then you've got to go to Columbia this big old state you know like structure and the people who are making decisions and who are also

already probably pretty freaked out about the music that they're bringing out oh yeah the thing that changed their minds was when the records started to sell. And it was really difficult in the early days

because while they wanted to reap the benefits of what came along with being associated with a label like Def Jam, they didn't want the negative things that came along with that as well. And it's really tricky because I had to go up to 52nd Street in New York to where Columbia was distributed and really work with their creative department. And very often it was difficult. But because Def Jam had so much power, more times than not they sort of just had to go along with whatever we were doing.

But they would assist us because they had resources up at the major label that we didn't have downtown at our small offices. I mean, you, I guess kind of simultaneous with this, you're creative director of this, but you're also sort of co-running, like, it sounds like a mini creative agency, Drawing Board. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Which is repping not just Def Jam's artists,

but you're also like, you're out there with all sorts of other artists. Yeah, we were lucky in're also like, you're out there with all sorts of other artists. We were lucky in the sense that, you know, I think of it as though nobody really cared what we were doing. Like the recording artists were making money. 10 years later would have been a totally different story. Oh yeah, for sure. The recording artists were making money for the label.

Everything else cost money. So what we were doing, nobody was paying attention. They were like, okay, just, you know, do whatever you guys are doing. And we thought having, you know, some sort of autonomy gave us the freedom to work with, you know, other labels like, you know, Sean Combs' Bad Boy label. But what we sort of didn't realize is that, you know, in a perfect world, it's sort of a conflict of interest because, you know, Def Jam and Bad Boy are like rivals on the charts. But here we are working for both of them. But, you know, in their defense, you know, Russell Simmons and Lior Cohen and Sean Combs and Andre Harrell and all of them were all really good friends.

And so while there was this creative rivalry out in the so-called real world, behind the scenes, they were all really tight and they shared information. And so I felt like in a lot of ways, we were sort of doing the same thing. Yeah. And less. I mean, but that was also the time where like right around like the East Coast, West Coast thing started happening.

Yeah, that is true. But, you know, it would have been impossible to do that, you know, during today's, you know, way of doing business because ideally people think that either you're giving all the good stuff to one company versus another, but also people just don't want to share information in the same way. So you're doing this. I mean, there's an interesting backdrop

in the world of graffiti at the same time also because the city's changing. At one point, we get a new mayor who decides that the big thing that has to change is like it creates this quality of life crimes phrase. And then you've got like these forces that are going out now and making it the number one priority to strip graffiti off of every inch of New York City. Yeah. And making it illegal to buy spray paint. Yeah. and making it illegal to buy spray paint.

It seems like, I'm curious whether you were already sort of like largely out of that part of it, but it seemed like from the outside looking in, like that was a moment where that world kind of just ground to a halt. Oh yeah, sure. I mean, a lot of what happened is we all sort of moved in another direction. So to some degree I was completely out of it. But being a

native New Yorker and, you know, somewhat of a rebel, I'm always sort of anti-establishment in that way. And it was a bit of a drag to see them cracking down on people that could potentially become artists. But with the MTA and the city, we never really had an ally. And the strange thing is, even to this very day, the MTA will not do anything with any artist that has any relationship to graffiti in any way, shape, or form.

And it's unfortunate because people should be allowed to grow and transition and change, but it hasn't happened yet. I remember, I guess it was probably right around that time also because while I was getting pulled off

trains and walls around the city, there was one place, Long Island City. Five points. Yeah, which became the Mecca. It's like all of a sudden you have this big old warehouse building. And inside of it, I guess back then it was cheap artist lofts. But the whole outside of the building became this living, breathing place where the best writers and the best street artists in the world would come. And with an international following, it became famous. And then you look up and you sort of have to, you know,

get an appointment to paint on the building. And, you know, I just remember thinking that it was a great sense of community. And it was the place that a lot of people went to see their friends and you would look and see what, you know, folks had done and, you know, you go and take pictures and whatnot. But the thing that I loved the most is when they did the old timers day, because that was when all the cats that were, you know, riding and coming up when I was a kid, I would get to meet them in person. And now everybody's an adult and they're not hiding in the shadows. But I just remember really getting a chance to meet and say thank you to some of the people that I idolized as a kid when you just sort of see

their name, but you don't know them and you don't know anybody that knows them. And the only connection you have to this person is constantly looking at his writing all around the city, or her writing. And that was the thing to me that was really great about Five Points, is it had this beautiful sense of community. And in all actuality, when we look at what's happened since it's been gone, it would have been the perfect place to put a museum because it already had a built-in audience. Yeah. I mean, to put a bow on that story, when you said when it was gone, it was kind of devastating. This was a place where people would travel from all over the world to see some of the most stunning stuff.

And there were walls that were getting put up new all the time. It was owned by somebody. There was a dispute. And literally, it's about five, six years ago now, everyone woke up one day. And overnight, the owner of the building, whether you agree with what was done or not, basically hired a crew to come in and whitewashed the entire building. And like everyone woke up the next day like, wow, it's over. Well, what was a drag to me was that

the building owner capitalized on all of this work that a whole community of people did first and foremost. And the thing that was really horrible is that they also named the building after the movement and they had nothing to do with that and you think that they would have at least thought of a way to keep the energy of art in the neighborhood

and they didn't even think about that and you know it's unfortunate and you know even with PS1 being right there, PS1 never sort of embraced the movement either. And you just think between the two of those things, they had this, you know, this ball of electric energy right in the palm of their hands. And they just did not like see it for that. Missed opportunity. Yeah. So as all this is happening, you also reach a point where your time comes to an end at, at Def Jam.

And you also wrap at the same time. You're like, okay, so, so our agency, like just kind of like my time in this work, feels like it's done. I'm curious what led you to make that call. I just had gotten to a point where I felt like I dedicated quite a bit of my time to running a design firm, designing records and also when Def Jam moved uptown to midtown it just changed the energy

was different it became a corporate record label and everybody started cashing their chips you know Rick had already gone off to California. Russell was doing multiple things. And they'd sold a portion of the company. And the energy was just gone. And after a while, I just sort of thought, what am I hanging on to? I'm hanging on to a legacy that has sort of changed. And all of the bands had broken out and became major successes and everybody that was

there now was new they didn't remember the old regime i didn't have people that worked there that remembered the old regime and it just you know i never wanted to be somebody that was working for money and i just felt like i had done as much as I could do and it was time to move on, even if I didn't know what that meant. And that's my other big curiosity. Because there's two things that happen. One is like, okay, it's time.

The other thing is having a sense of what's coming next. How did you... Because you, in relatively short order, you start exploring fine art again. You start working on large scale commercial brand work and stuff like this. And it seems like, it seemed like it happened really quickly. But I'm curious whether from the inside, you lived it. Did it feel that way to you?

No, none of it ever felt fast, that's for sure. But what I did understand was that it was time to do something different. And my partner at the time, Steve Carr, had gone off to Hollywood, and he started making movies. And it just looked like everybody was having fun. And I was managing this team of people that didn't remember the old days and I just wanted out mostly for that and it wasn't like you know anybody pushed me out I could have stayed there and been a creative director probably until today and it probably would have been fine you know there, there's always a new, you know, like,

you know, hot artists on the horizon, but it just, it just didn't have the edge that I thought that it had back in the day. And so I just decided I wanted to do something different. And the thing that I recognize instantly, this is at a time when the guys and girls from Beautiful Losers start bubbling. And the street art movement was being born. And you had all these little indie artists that were starting to make work and starting to get a foothold in the gallery scene. And I just thought, we helped to birth this movement and I want to be a part of this. And in order to do that, I have to jump in with both feet and really focus. And that was the moment when I decided I wanted to

just be an artist and not be thought of as a graphic designer and not be thought of as a graffiti artist, but just a capital A artist. And that meant dedicating myself to doing that. But what I sort of also had to contend with was these major brands wanting to collaborate because of my relationship to hip-hop and Def Jam. And so, you know, as somebody who never really wants to leave money on the table, you take those gigs. And the thing that we were talking about earlier, there's no shame in doing that.

And to some degree, I felt like, if anything, I was owed that because I remember when Run DMC signed with Adidas and I had an opportunity to work with them and collaborate. But I was so young that they didn't think that I could fully design a clothing line by myself. So I was sort of like ghosting another designer. And fast forward all these years later, Adidas comes to me and they're going to give me a signature collection of my own with my name on it and pay me and distribute it. And I thought, yeah, I deserve this.

That feels right. Yeah. And it's interesting also that this all coincides with, like you said, this moment in time where what a couple of decades before outside of a fringe group of people who saw

this as art, now it's come full circle and now it's sort of like the world is seeing this as capital A art. And you have installations and galleries and representation and museum shows and people are, are, you know, like wanting this and wanting to support it in a way where it seemed like it was, it was a really good time for you to step back into that world.

Also, one of my curiosities too, was when you had spent so much time by the time you made that call, largely waking up in the morning and yes, tapping your own creative juices and coming up with the stuff that was really creative for you. But in the name of, in no small part, creating other people's identities and telling other people's stories, was it hard at all for you to step back into you being the capital A artist, telling your own story and having all of your own sort of like visual identity to put out into the world and saying, this is not on behalf of anyone else. Like, did you have any struggle at all sort of saying, okay, so at this moment in time, who am I and what do i have to say

no you know i i think if anything what i realized was you know i had been teaching at brooklyn academy of music and you know some other um universities and and you know and working with some great schools as well. And I just realized that I had a lot to say for people that were so young, they didn't remember the movement. Anytime you walk into a room and somebody doesn't know who Run DMC is, you got a little bit of work to do. I just thought that I could be, you know, I could use my time and knowledge by educating young people about the history of the culture because very few of my peers have an interest in teaching and being spokespersons for the culture. And now it's more common than it was even five, ten years ago. Everybody's sort of stepping up to tell their story.

But I just felt like it was a part of my experience that I wanted to share with people because I'd been on a very unique journey. And I felt very fortunate that I could have an opportunity like that, even if I, you know, created a lot of it myself. But it was just something that, you know, I didn't aspire to want to do public speaking or educate young people or even morph into, you know, somewhat of a historian, but it just happened naturally. And I felt that it was a natural progression considering how hip hop started. It started out of nothing. So here I go, some people say

might be the third leg of my career. And I'm gonna now start telling the story of who we are and where we come from. Some of the work that you've done along the way over the last decade or so, you mentioned a lot more education, a lot more storytelling, a lot more. And also big, going back to big and collaborative murals and outdoor art, a project with Juilliard, a project in Nebraska, I'm blanking on the name of the...

Oh, the Bema Center. Yeah, the Bema Center for... To create that love mural. When it's, and it seems like that that's a lot of, not a lot of, but a strong element of what you're going back to is the teaching side and also these collaborative, really large scale, public art things that have a message.

And there's this 1960s, really clean lines, pop style that I see in your work, which I personally just love. I mean, you're walking in here today with one of your pieces hanging up. It feels like there's almost a coming home in some of this work. Oh, sure. You know, the thing about what I do is it's always rooted in childhood memories, number one. You know, I was born in the 60s. And so things like, you know, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Motown, all those things inform who I am.

People that are younger just sort of stop at the hip hop stuff, which, you know, it's okay. They don't know what they don't know. But all of those things inform the work that I do. And having a graphic sensibility before I even knew what it was and then using that in my graffiti work and then later finding that as a way of sort of connecting with my graphic design work,

my style has always been bold. It's always been bright. I like to make people feel good. And so my color palette is always going to be warm and friendly. You know, that said, it definitely is sort of like a homecoming because now I can incorporate all of these things into one body of work. So when you look at my collage work, it has a lot of nostalgia built into it. The work that I do with the Trusted Brands series is about celebrating the past in a lot of ways.

And for me, I just think that if there's a way to connect all of those things, but not have it feel forced, then ultimately that's the goal. And I think of the educational component as the same thing. Temple University is giving me an opportunity to teach there and I've been working with them for the last five years maybe. And I travel around the country and I lecture at universities and other creative

institutions and cultural institutions. And I feel fortunate that people want to hear the stories because I'm somebody that primarily worked behind the curtain, but I was working with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald of, you know, this generation. And I think that that's the thing that's so important. And if I find myself in that conversation or, you know, Fab Five Freddy or, you know, Crash or some other visual person as well, I think that we deserve to be in that same group. Just because we didn't have a microphone in our hand doesn't mean that the work we were doing wasn't equally as valid.

And that's the thing that I'm experiencing right now is that we are all standing on a line together. It's not like those people are in front and we're behind them. Yeah, I love that. And it's funny, the people that you just rattled off, like so many of those people that I think, and many of them actually stepped out long before you to sort of like say, like, I'm going to claim my name and my sort of like stake in my voice here. But it feels like we're at this moment where a lot of people diverged. And now a lot of like, sort of like the original class

is coming back together. And everyone's sort of like the original class is coming back together and everyone's sort of like taking their seat and being seen and recognized for it. Well, the other thing too is that if you dedicate 30 or 40 years to doing something and you master it, you hope eventually people take stock and recognize it. I mean, if you look at Henry Chalfant or Martha Cooper or Jeanette Beckman, any of those folks, they've been making work for a good portion of time. And it's only right that people start to recognize them in the same sentence as their subjects. Yeah. I love that you brought up Martha Cooper also. I didn't

know about her work until relatively recently and I saw it and I was just mesmerized. Yeah. She's been documenting what I've done since I was a kid. Yeah, I love it. For those who don't know that name, also check it out. She's a photographer who has some just incredible body of work. Yeah, I mean, the same

thing with Jeanette Beckman. She's been photographing hip-hop artists since the very beginning. And now she's working with Levi's, Dior, and all of these major brands. But like myself, she's been out there on the front line making work consistently for 40-some odd years. It's funny, it feels like you're in a moment, you're in a season where you're putting together things where there's just a lot of fun happening. Now, because I think we've weathered the storm, we've been on the journey.

And the reality is, I think if you've been around long enough and you understand that life is about peaks and valleys, there are going to be great days and then there are going to be lean days. And ultimately, if you're making work for a living and you can sustain yourself and people appreciate what you do, there really is nothing more than that. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle too. So hanging out here in this container, Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Well, for me, it's just doing what I love and having people appreciate it

and still feeling good in my body. I think that's the thing that I love the most is being well past somebody that's in my 20s, but still having that feeling of what it was like when I was a 20-something running around in the streets of New York. And I knew where I was going. I just didn't know how I was going to get there.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it,

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And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation.

Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.

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