No Jumper - The Mister Cartoon Interview

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

Shout out to our presenting partner Bluechew. Help support the channel, Visit Bluechew.com and get your first order free when you use promo code Adam22. Just pay $5 shipping. --- Legendary Mister Cartoon gives an exclusive interview on the No Jumper podcast to talk about his career milestones, Eminem, Eazy E, 50 Cent, his new upcoming documentary and the new music scene. --- FOLLOW OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST! https://spoti.fi/2vi9lsD CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz Follow us on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nojumper and iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-jumper/id1001659715?mt=2 and follow us on Social Media: http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm follow Adam22 as well: http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 and follow adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper, coolest podcast on the world, and today I am here with the one and only Mr. Cartoon. How you feel, man? What's up, Adam? I'm doing good. Great to have you in here, man. Good to be here. I feel like one of the most interesting things about you to me is the fact that I feel like you were so early on realizing what being a tattoo artist was going to be, but you figured it out like 20 years before everybody else. True or false?

It sounds better coming out of you, you know? That's what she said. It was something that, I don't know, was just real natural because I listen to hip-hop and oldies and I like tattoos. But when you would go to the tattoo shops, back then it was more like biker-owned. You know what I'm saying? There wasn't hip-hop on the radio, and rappers weren't really getting tattoos when we started out. But the homie street guys were.

So we were just doing it to like be cool amongst our peers, you know? Right. Tattooing is the most difficult form of all too. Right. Yeah, we didn't really, really see that big picture at the very beginning. We were doing it more to because we had to. Right. Yeah, because I mean, there's always going to be that conflict.

And I'm sure you've had to go through it a lot of tattooing being the most mean, hardcore, not friendly to new stuff industry. And you had a little bit more of a progressive mindset going into it, right? Or at least you were able to sort of see what was coming down the pipe. For sure. I mean, with tattooing those older OGs, they don't even want to see you doing a t-shirt graphic. They look at that as like, you know, maybe for the shop, it's cool, but don't get too fancy on us. You know what I mean?

Right. I never went to art school like formal art training. but if you did, they shit on you. Really? That was a real handicapped. Frowned upon. This was a tattooing was something. It was like a blue collar job.

You know, plumbers, maybe electrician, and then a tattooer, and then like a guy who paints cars. Right. You know, it went in that. It wasn't supposed to. But when I got into it, I was already doing album covers for like EZE, above the law, black, you know, Black Mafia Life album. So I was doing already, that's a kid Frost.

style on cover. So I was like, man, you get paid this in the music business, but the hardest sport in the world is tattooing, and you get the least money for that. So it just seemed like it had a long way to go still. Right. Definitely. But the tattoos were dope, but the business side of it still had a long way to go. Yeah. That's so interesting how different subcultures develop different like codes of conduct. Like a guy came up to me at my meeting in London. He He goes, man, you know, there's a tattoo artist around the corner, and he's supposed to be this legendary tattoo artist. And I asked him to tattoo my face, and he told me he wouldn't tattoo my face. And he just looked at him and laughed.

Like, of course, you want to tattoo your face. You don't have any tattoos, you idiot. This dude's probably a somewhat respectable guy because he just saved you a whole lot of torment and trauma. Yeah, and if you walk around with a tattoo on your face, every knucklehead is going to approach you. I want to know why you got that tattoo on your face. Right. So he probably saved him from getting beat up. And you know, I ain't got to tell you, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Once the facials in the neck and the hands start getting done, you definitely attract the eyes of law enforcement and knuckleheads in the bar. Yeah, that is a weird one because I feel like I've managed to avoid a lot of that. But every once in a while, I remember I went like three, four years ago, I'm just walking on the street, my old neighborhood in Korea town and some freaking Mexican dude runs up on me. Hey, fuck skinheads. I'm like, bro, I got like some hair on my head. I'm not like, you know, this much hair on my head. I'm like, not a skin hat, bro.

I'm just like, damn, like, maybe I'm moving to the wrong area. This guy's trying to press me here. Yeah, those areas are slowly getting gentrified. Rapidly, that area. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, you drive through, even Hollywood right now has changed. Big time.

Yeah, this was like Rebels neighborhood and MSs down the street. You know. Still a lot of MS. graffiti around here, but the cop presence is pretty hardcore now, too. They're like ninjas. They're more hit out, you know, shadows and shadows and, you know. I was working on a computer the other day. A dude pulls up and started jerking off behind the dumpster for probably an hour and a half.

Yeah, that's going to happen. That's more common to downtown L.A., though. Yeah, yeah, I witnessed, unfortunately, a lot of homeless sex. We were just talking about that. Yeah. But once they get the erase your memory bank thing going, I'll take that part out. You'll use that. Please, Doc.

Erase any evidence of homeless intercourse that I've witnessed throughout my life. They get horny, too, you know? They do, and they got to get it out. All right, guys, quick break to show love to one of our sponsors. That is bluechew.com. Yeah, Bluechew offers men a performance enhancement for the bedroom. If you head on over to bluechew.com, one of their affiliated physicians will work with you to find the dosage and the active ingredients that will work for you. These things work faster than pills because they're actual gummies.

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Let me answer this. So you work in downtown for 20-something years now? Right. But where were you born exactly? And let's talk about the early days and discovering that you had a knack for art. I was born at California Hospital in downtown L.A. in 1969. Wow. Okay. So it started in downtown as well. Started in downtown. And my parents moved to the harbor area of L.A., which is the 10th freeway. And I lived in Torrance. I lived in Redondo, Gardena. But I ended up my high school years in San Pedro,

graduated from San Pedro High. So that's a nice little Southern California upbringing. You get to sort of experience that whole sort of south of L.A. Yeah, used to be called the South Bay. No, they'd call it the Harbor area. I live in Long Beach a long time, so we were out Downing, San Pedro, and Torrance and all those areas a lot, you know. sure. So growing up down there is good, you know. You got white picket fence and palm trees,

but you've got housing projects and lowriders. Everything's kind of mixed together by the water. Did you feel poor as a kid or did you felt like your parents had something? No, I didn't know, you know, really how good I had it until I see some of my homeboys and they were real poor, you know? Right. I had two middle class parents that worked a lot and they let, you know, With them gone, I went into the street. But we had a pretty good compared to them. My dad was always a hustler and had vintage cars. But we were, you know, regular middle class Mexican family in Southern California.

Right. Did you find yourself? Or was there a little bit of conflict in your head where you're sort of like, I don't have to do this, but I'm so attracted to sort of the underbelly of this culture and the society? Oh, for sure. Like, you know, there was plenty of my homeways. It just played sports. I never got into, like, gang life or, um,

that culture um i was attracted you know i didn't know the fons was doing robberies you know or or carjackings and shit the fawns from happy days yeah like i wanted to hang out with the fons in high school right but i didn't know that you know they were gang banging and shit i didn't know the fauns did that is that in the show where you're just a san pedro version of that that was the cool thing to do is that you were out here selling drugs or bringing in cars or doing whatever yeah i mean in in the harbor area you have two licks you could be a longshoreman or you know sell dope so a longshoreman means basically you're just wrapped up in the whole union working on the dock type world you're a union worker that makes you know six starts a six figure a year and uh all the benefits and you know some of them become crane operators and get big bread so you got home boys from l a with bread driving rag and paulas right having shit and then the guys who can't get those jobs end up doing what they got to do to try to get that shit too right Yeah, a lot of jealousy in the mix, guys that grow up together and they're battling each other.

Did your own people kind of... Did you think that you were going to end up with that sort of comfy job lifestyle? I didn't have any relatives that were an onshoreman, so no action. You pretty much have a relative in there. So when I knew I loved the lowriders, you know, I didn't like going to jail, didn't like, you know, shooting anybody or robbie shit. but I like the low riders, the fashion, the culture, you know what I mean? Like the music, the girls, all the good shit. And so you knew that about your personality because, you know, you go through those phases

when you're young where you're trying to figure out who you are. And, you know, sometimes I'm having a conversation with my friends the other day who's telling me, you know, I got a buddy who, you know, he did some big drug deal, a couple kilos, whatever, is this first time really doing any dirt. And doing 20 years off that. A lot of people don't really even get the time to figure out. what they are as a person. They might have been able to do that a couple of times

and realize that it wasn't for them. Some people look into wearing that lesson right away. Yeah, exactly. And I was going to high school in the 80s. You know, so gang banging was at an all-time high. Shit was real crazy. Your own people kind of praying on you. And I got fortunate that I love to draw.

You know what I mean? And I would do graffiti and I'll paint murals on the wall. And I figured out how to paint portraits of people's cars and shit. like airbrushing t-shirts. So I set up at the Rhodium, swap me. I'll go to the sloss in indoor, and I'll set up a little 10 by 10

and start airbrushing YTs. Were you so good that in your art classes in elementary school, the teachers were looking at your stuff? I'm like, holy shit, he's got some talent. For sure, I drew for the school newspaper. I'd get myself out. I wouldn't do any work all year. And then the teacher's ready to flunk me,

and I'd pull the teacher aside and go, look. Before you flunk me, I noticed that everyone brings food in the classroom. If I draw you a sign that says no eating in class, in a way that's going to catch their eye, your life's going to be easier. So if you give me that D, I'm going to hook you up. Just pass me.

So I started to kind of learn how to use artwork. Wow. Not to so much manipulate other people, but to manipulate the situation and kind of start bartering my artwork. And that's how I built my first lowriders and started my whole company by bartering shit. Wow. But you were so good at art that. It was kind of undeniable.

You know what? I found out that I love drawing at about 12. And my parents were really cool laid back. They're artists too. They can draw. Not professionally, but they can draw. And with their encouragement, I kept doing it. And I put in some years and I started to get good from practicing.

I think it's from practicing. Yeah. You got to have that natural talent. Then you need an absurd amount of practice on top of the talent, I think. Yeah. The natural talent part was that I liked art. I had a passion. and I really dug it.

Then you throw practice on top of that. And then people kind of, I don't know if you're born with it or you can kind of build it as you go. You know what I'm saying? Because I've definitely had to work at it. So timing is also maybe what they call a talent surrounding yourself by other people that are on the same path. And nowadays, I feel like the art thing has probably become a lot different because kids can go on YouTube and start watching tutorials. could teach them all kinds of stuff super fast did you have anything that you could really learn for were you going to the library get get some books on drawing or something i would just kind of look

over shoulder of uh other graffiti riders or my old man had a print shop like his business was that he made business cards restaurant menus posters and that required artists to be around and uh here he'd made a business card for a candy paint shop you know the painted cars And he goes, hey, my son's in the art, man. Can I send them over there to hang out? And he dropped me off at a body shop. And these guys were candy and impolas and laying flake and pearls. A bunch of real ass dudes.

Yeah, a bunch of older men that were into fucking candy painting cars and knuckleheads. And I just was a fly on the wall. And you just start soaking shit up right away? I did. I fell in love with the old school cars. And I started sweep the shop and, you know, made a decision that I'm going to commit myself. to this. I'm going to have that shit one day. Did you, do you feel like that kind of stuff kept you away from getting deep into the street

stuff or did you still sort of get into that whole world? Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, I was in it. Once you kind of, you know, that's your group of friends. You're in it, but you got to learn how to survive through that shit. So my friends will be like, hey, man, we're going to go to this party. And then after that, we're going to go, you know, hit this liquor store. You down?

I'd be like, fuck, yeah, let's do that shit. Oh, fuck. I got to go to work. You know what I'm saying? And so I got a job at a young age of working in the body shops and hanging around the art and shit. And it saved me from being around the knuckleheads. And did you feel like the people that you were around? Because at that age, it's very much, there's a lot of incentive to sort of prove yourself as being crazy, as being willing to do some dumb-ass shit just to get a rep.

Do you feel like they sort of looked at you as in like you got talent? maybe you shouldn't necessarily be they'll give you a pass. I'm not definitely I'm rob in the liquor store. Definitely. My job was to ride on walls. You know what I mean? That's what I was best at. I did just enough fighting and I have to go fucking crack

somebody, you know, do this and that to let them know you're not some pussy or some shit. But that wasn't me for sure because I seen my friends going getting busted and start to do some time and you go to a couple of funerals in between that shit and you're like, man, that guy

It was way harder than me and he got fucked up. Right. So I better stick to the drawing shit. I feel you. So the tough guy shit's hard to be, hard to win in that. Right. Do you, were you doing a lot of graffiti at the same time as well? I was.

Right. And so did it stand out to you that there was a clear difference between legal and illegal art? For sure. When you're too illegal piece, your heart's going through your chest. And you got to focus on doing straight lines and like what you do right right now, everyone's going to see it. So even though you're nervous as fuck, you can't let that shit show in your art

or in your piece. Sometimes it would just be block letters or a tag in a bathroom, but regardless, you've got to make it clean and you've got to get off under pressure. Then I would line up legit murals that I would trade a set of wire wheels or Dayton's for a painter

their name on the side of their building. So I started to learn how to scale buildings and put my artwork in public and make it readable and legible. And at the same time, KDI was a brand new radio station. Power 106 was still playing like high-energy music and hip-hop at night. Right. You know, and I was like, how can I fit in to hip-hop? You know what I mean?

Where do I stand? And breaking wasn't going to happen. D-Jing. Rapping wasn't going to happen, but I could draw. Right. So I just kind of dove in in the deep end. graffiti. Wow. That's so interesting. Yeah. So what kind of spots were you hitting doing graffiti at that time? And was it primarily just tags and block letters? Or had you

had you got around to the concept of peace in yet? Well, L.A. and New York are very different as far as graffiti goes. But we were definitely influenced by the bombing that was going on in New York. In the 80s. It must have been impossible to avoid how crazy the TV footage of the subways and stuff looked like, right? Exactly. Like we'd watch TV shows and the trains would be trashed, you know, but it's like, you're watching the Jeffersons or some shit. And he just happens to be in the subway and you, like, you see the shit. Like, oh, shit. And we couldn't rewind or pause that shit. And there was a Blondie video, Rapture, where has Lee and probably a Futura piece in that shit. First ever white girl rap video ever, I believe. Yeah, and it had real

graph where Beat Street had fake graffiti in it. Like, Remo did fake graffiti. He was dope. Rimo was dope. But even back then as a kid, I thought that movie was the shit. Now as an adult, I look back and I'm like, the art department did that graffiti. That's fucked up. They could have got even the worst graffiti writer to do better. Right. But we were just happy to see minorities or graffiti or hip-hop on the screen, you know?

Yeah, definitely. It's why when you talk about just knowing early on that it was important for you to do stuff like getting negotiated and somehow getting a mural that you could then use? as a way to get your name out there. Like, what was motivating and fueling that kind of work as a young kid? And what made you smart enough to know that that was important? Because a lot of young graffiti artists, they're super motivated to just go and do graffiti, but they're not thinking ever beyond that.

It seems like you started to think about that almost immediately. Yeah, it happened really weird. I got arrested in high school. I had two detectives come in and pull me out of class. And they've been following me for some time, but I have two names. a graph name and a street name wow my street name was cartoon but my graph name was flame one okay and uh so they were looking for two different heads so i slowed up down for a minute and uh yeah so i caught a case and uh fortunately the officer had been to one of my father's birthday parties and my old

man throws good parties and he's a real character and everyone loves my own man right he's still around he's he is 76 wow he's got the umpala that he's got the umpala that the shop right now. He's working on it. That's good. Me and my father are real tight. I bet. And, um, long story short, that saved me when I had to go to court and all that shit. It's just having the two different names. Or no, him,

the copy of friends. The arresting officer knowing my old man was good, you know, and, uh, so from that point, I was like, all right, I'm not that slick as I thought I was. And I had to pay a fine. So I went and did graffiti to pay the fine. Right. And I would go, I would walk up to

boxing schools, barbershop. sound and audio shops anywhere that it was kind of like would embrace graffiti you know and I would try to do straight letters and put their phone number and I even figured I had to do t-shirt graphics back then because I was like you can make money with a t-shirt graphic so you were actually making t-shirts or just doing the graphics for other people's shirts or something I was air brushing them by hand and I learned how to do camera ready pen and ink graphic so that could be put on a silk screen yeah I kind of taught myself all that shit by watching other, by watching professionals.

That's just so impressive to me. So few people think outside the box and like, so few people have that desire to just teach themselves things. Like, are you the kind of person that just gets a crazy amount of satisfaction from thinking up something in your head that you don't know how to do and then just tracking it down and figuring it out? Oh, for sure. It's like taking a 69 Impala that's a bucket. And it looks like it's been on the bottom of the ocean and doing restoration on it. You know, acid blasting that, you know, soda blasting the car, take it off the frame, powder coat the frame and put each nut and bolt brand new.

It's kind of how I would do with other projects and being able to build something, I think, you know. And like thinking of your own mind that way. It just strikes me as like that being really the ideal mind state you would want to have if you want to just start to excel at something. Well, yeah, and it helps to see some people do it that you know. So I had a member in my crew named Risk and Risk had a company called Third Rail. And it was the first time we had seen streetwear.

Right. And this motherfucker threw a tag in applique on the front of a hoodie and had like a little embroidery on the wrist and a woven label. We were like, what do? And the woven label said like, fuck you on it or some shit like that. And we were blown away, man, that first of all, the homie did it. Second of all, he said, fuck you. Third of all, this was some quality shit. Yeah.

Up to that point, street fashion in L.A. was Navy surplus stores. So you would go and you could buy Carhart, Van Davis, Dickies, and big sizes and men sizes. at these these shops and they were men they had like Swiss army knives a bunch of bullshit you didn't want but they did have carhart and thick ass raw denim jeans Levi's raw denim and we go to JCPenny and buy white t-shirts and that was our fashion right and growing up in Southern California you don't have to have layers of jackets and all that you get one jacket but seeing your friend be able to do that like you know when you're at that state in your life even having a custom t-shirt seems pretty cool nowadays everybody sort of understands that it's easy to make a t-shirt

but seeing custom embroidered stuff like that must have made you really just be like holy fuck we can make our own shit that is this high quality yeah and it was because i seen my friend do it so if he did i know he's a knucklehead i know i could do it it gave me the motivation to attempt it myself you know how far with the art side of things do you feel or because so you were when you realize that you could sort of take your art to the next level through hip hop. What was that like? How did you decide to actually find a way to interject yourself into that scene? Who were the artists that you were messed with early on?

Well, you know, my first introduction, of course, was listening to KD.A. White. And there was this, I would hear radio advertisements for Uncle Jam's Army. This weekend Uncle Jam's Army at the road, at the skating rink. You know, there would be these crazy commercials and it would be like, Egyptian lover. was going to be performing and they would hype you up. And so I was like, man, how could I be a part of that shit, you know? And I'm seeing EasyE at a car wash in L.A. And I got all fucking shook.

Oh, my God, there's Easy E. My motherfucking hype. You know what I'm saying? Well, you hear we talk when you met him. This is 1990. Okay. And he's chilling. Of course he's got two giant Samoan twins with them.

And I walked up to him, and I gave him my business card. And I was like, what's up, easy? My name's Tune, and I do murals and logos and blah, blah, blah. I gave my car. He said, all right, man, good to meet you, and shook my hand, and kept the move. Never heard from him. Found out that he lived in Norwalk where I lived at a time, and they go, easy lives down the block. A little bit crazy, I got out my car, I had a mural on the hood, knocked on his door.

The Samoans answered the door. what's up was easy here who you man and I was like I'm artist man and I'm trying to talk my way out easy came out looked at my car I gave him my little two second pitch he said call me on Monday and after that I did the penthouse players album cover MC Wrens first album cover and uh above the law wow so that was it was pretty crazy but I was having to walk in and deal with an art department And prior to that, I started doing graffiti on TV shows. My sister, you know, your family gets you a job. She goes, you're not going to believe this.

They want you to go to Paramount Studios and just ride all over the walls. And they're going to pay you. My mom did an invoice on a typewriter. Got my old man's old briefcase through my spray paint cans and that shit. And I had never seen a craft service table. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, shit. They're giving free food away.

There's a moment in your life where, seeing the bags of chips and the free sodas and shit really will affect you a lot yeah you're like they're calling me sir and um i'm in hollywood right now you know what i mean yeah and uh my homeboys didn't even know how to get to hollywood and we live like 20 miles from there you know right but uh long story short i just kind of had the confidence to go in there and do that shit and i was like let me get the straight just write my name on that wall like my homeboy's Like, yeah, just have fun, man. Fuck it up.

And my homeboys didn't think he was even a real job. Right. They thought I had like a scam going, you know, that you're getting paid for writing our names and you do that shit for free anyway. It must have seemed so confusing them because to a regular guy like that, he doesn't really understand that the reason why you are in that position and why you deserve to be in that position is because of the fact that you networked your ass off and got into that position, found your way into that spot.

We had no concept. It's tough for somebody to understand that when they don't really. They're like, we're all doing graffiti. Yeah. Well, I'd bring them with me, and they start stealing food off the craft service table. And they'd be like, oh, excuse me, sir. You can have it. They're shoving a bag of laser in their pocket.

And then, you know, they start punking the PAs. Once they figure it out they could get over and that everyone's kind of soft, I realized I couldn't bring them back to, you know, don't bring your homeboys to work. You know, I guess is the moral of that story. That's a weird lesson to learn, huh? man they go right hit up the bathroom and shit oh my god that's too funny

hit on the intern girls and shit yeah damn but so were you at the time doing all the artwork for the different people that you fucked with genuinely on a musical level did that also kind of start to make you feel like

I want to do something bigger than this because you sort of turn to the tattoo and stuff soon after was there a level to which you were sort of just not really 100% content with doing the album art that side of things. Oh, for sure. Like, anytime I get good at something,

I'm ready to move on to the next. So I'd already kind of conquered some of that stuff and seeing how the flow and seeing how hard that music business is, like chase a check and people are full of shit and this and that. I started to learn that also. At that same time, I started getting tattooed and hanging out in tattoo shops and smell the green soap and motherfuckers getting sleeve down in there. You know what I mean?

What was the tattoo world like in this year? Early 90s, was it starting to really like emerge into his own thing? Is that the era that you got most of your sleeves now? Yeah, yeah. I definitely got all these tattoos in the 90s. Because the game, you know, we think about tattooing and haven't changed so much. I'm just curious what stage it was really at that point, because this is before tattooing had really gone mainstream,

but it's maybe 10 years or so before it went mainstream, so it still probably had a little bit of that seeping through. Sure. It was not jewelry yet. For now, an NBA player gets a contract. He's going to hit the jewelry spot. He's going to get his ride and he's going to get tattooed. Because the tattoos, they realize, is the dedication to the culture.

You know what I'm saying? It's commitment. It's its finest. But back then, it was more, there wasn't a lot of brothers getting tattooed. You know, the Mexicans had full sleeves like the homies, but a lot of them were done by single needle by doing time. So if you had sleeves, they would ask you where you do your time at. Right. This was the emergence of regular guys, working guys, getting sleeves.

And a lot of them worked in the business in Hollywood. And Ed Hardy was probably the biggest star amongst us. Mark Mahoney was a big star. Jack Rudy, baby Ray. Bob Roberts. These were names that you would hear, Coyote, Freddie D'Grady. You know, these guys were famous way before the internet.

Right. And we're notorious. You know, Bob Roberts one time told me that he's, I asked him if he would tattoo my head. And he said, yeah, but only if you let me do the entire thing from the front of your hair line all the way back, the whole top piece. And I was a little bit too timid to get it all outlined that day,

so I didn't do it. that's probably should go back to have a bob rober's headpiece is classic that's a big one but those are the guys we looked up to we were like bikers you know freddie was probably the only chicano in there but jack rudy had grew up in mexican neighborhood and drew like a homie you know so uh we were in there but now if you look on instagram you know chicano's mexican americans are we're the pretty much deepest in that shit and the art form especially in fine line black great right now you see pieces coming you know germany france and south america and all these guys are doing

amazing work they're doing it in places where they probably don't even know what it means they just know it looks good do you miss that era tattooing when there was more regional styles and it was more stuff was more specific to an area whereas now everybody's learning from each other online and it's probably less of a you know it's like that music as well It's like now you can hear somebody from Milwaukee and he sounds like he's from LA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a time to reminisce. And I'm fortunate I was there for the, you know, we even caught the innocent time because

it wasn't so polished and perfect. And, you know, there's reality shows. And I have nothing to do with tattoos. They're just hanging out in the tattoo shop and arguing over their old lady and shit. But back then, you had a lot of rules and respect levels. So to open a shop, you had a. asked permission to open up a shop to buy a tattoo machine you had asked permission to do that things were definitely everyone knew each other a lot better but now you have to hey it is what it is

there's tattoo reality shows you either embrace that shit or you get left behind so we just try to embrace it and maintain the shit we learned from then is it hard not to get salty about how whitewashed shit has gone how ridiculous how commercialized it's gone. I mean, I'm in the middle because I am in business. So I like that part. It grows. Your business grows. Yeah, like I've turned down all the reality shows for tattooing because part of my success is I'm hard to find. And people don't know. They see an interview here and there, but they really don't know our day to day. So I wanted to keep that and I didn't want to. But those shows help me in a roundabout way where it relaxes the matter.

So let me in to do, right now I'm doing the LA Clippers merch and Modelo and a major, I got two vans coming out. So we have these like corporate gigs, but then to balance that, I'll walk into a school in South Central and talk to a high school class. But it seems like you will go and work with these corporations, but you primarily make it about your art and not, oh, let me just go do a Nike thing where I'm sitting on camera for Nike for a while. Wow. No, you want to be able to try to translate the culture to, you know, other people that are in the same vibe you are, you know? In other words, I'm using the corporate company as a tool to forward and push forward the stuff. They're going to do it anyways. So they might as well have me or another street artist that, you know, grew up here. Let us do it. You know what I mean? Because they've been, you know, imitating and faking hip-hop art for a long time. So it's a, but yeah, you can watch those shows and start getting angry, you know, for sure. I know the OGs are fucked, man, they do not like that shit. Right. But it's going down.

It's a weird decision for you too, because it's kind of like if you totally don't do any of the corporate stuff or you never go on camera, you're kind of just opening the door for somebody who's a commercialized, goofy version of you. Yeah. To come in and be like, oh, I'll be the guy who goes on the news and talks about this world or whatever, you know? Yeah, I was telling the apprentices the other day in the studio, it's not good enough to be a dope tattoo artist. That's just mandatory. Everyone can draw, apparently, what I've been seeing. These motherfucking kids are dope.

They take my formula and they're able to run with it. You know what I mean? And add their own shit onto it. And they're 20, so they got plenty of time to sit around all day. Exactly. But that's even not good enough. You have to do that and be ready to be put on stage or a podcast and have to articulate the shit

and speak in front of a crowd and do these type of things. So that's the way the world is now is that you have to have all corners covered. And I learned on accident. Right. It feels like you, for years, and to some extent still, became like the default hip-hop tattoo artist

where if you asked a rapper, you know, who you fuck with as a tattoo artist or who did this or whatever, If you were ever going to see a tattoo artist in a hip-hop context, it was Mr. Cartoon. How did you get to that point of being that ubiquitous and just being around and just being known on that level? Well, first of all, I love hip-hop. You know what I mean? I mean, I listen to a lot of classic soul, you know, late 1950s, 60s and 70s classic soul music, you know?

Really, me and my wife, that's all we listen to. But of course, being that I am a graffiti rider, I have been to the East Coast. I'm a writer and graph rider at heart, you know what I mean? So I approached that in the art of tattooing with hip-hop. So it was something that kind of happened by accident. I started going on tour with Cypress Hill. My boy is Stefan Oriel. He was the road manager, and he would take me on tour.

he was like bring your tattoo shit with you we'd be backstage for six hours waiting for them to go on stage a lot of downtime is a wrap a lot of downtown in the backstage and you're in europe and shit so you can't just go home or nothing so long story short i just was put in that position luck is being prepared for opportunity you know that's a cliche but it rings true in certain areas where those times that you're practicing at home and no one's watching that's the shit that's the shit that makes you different. And so when the door does open, you're able to walk through it. You have a special relationship with Cypress Hill as opposed to, you've worked with a ton of

rappers, but culturally. Oh, for sure. You wouldn't be real on the smokebox, you guys just seen by your best friends. Yeah, I mean, you know, getting in a B, mugs, and Bob, all those guys, you know, they're from here. These are our local heroes. We don't have many heroes in our community that we can be like, man, these motherfuckers grew up in Southgate, you know?

And people might end up forgetting just because time sort of makes people forget about shit, But the fact that Cypress Hill were the first Hispanic rappers in the mid-early 90s, I mean, it just says a lot. Yeah, it had their own style. And, you know, Mugs moved over from New York and moved to Southgate, which is borderline in South Central. You know what I mean? You know, Muzzaid fight everybody. You know, he's a character, man. But he's the overseed, like, master of that whole thing, you know, being able to master my...

So I watch these guys do press. I watched them go and do interviews and how they moved and they had managers and an accountant. So I started to mirror myself after that. You know what I'm saying? So your mom says, you know, you are who you hang around. So being around people that are a little bit further from you, man, it fires you up. That's so interesting because like the same way that you were looking at your friend who was doing murals or whatever, now you're all of a sudden looking at Seversil, but you're thinking, well, they're doing the music business.

And it's already a very established formula of how you make money off of music. Tattooing is very new for that. Art in general in a hip-hop context was sort of, it was new, the idea of like really thinking of yourself as somebody who was really forming their business in the hip-hop scene. There's that sort of a similar thing. You're watching Siprasil and you're like, I could be this professional and organized and I can have these relationships. Yeah, when you see street guys do it, it makes it, it dumps it down to where you can understand it.

Hearing suits talk about it, it's hard to take in. But seeing the fellas do it, you're like, oh, shit, I could do this. So I mirrored them by going to say, I'll go to Japan, and I'll go to the northern part of Sendai, and I'll put snipes up on the polls that I was there. And then I will go do press. I'll do any interview I can get my hands on and do it in Japan. And I would work my way down, city by city, to tell you. I end up in Osaka and I stay there for like three months in Japan. Really?

And that's how I started to build my shit. And I would do what they did. Press, interviews, anything I could do, stickers out, merch, and started to try to step out of my body and say, if I was managing this artist, what would I do with them? Right. You know. Japan in particular stood out to you a lot, though, because they have such an interesting

history of how they view tattoos. I was in Japan. I tried to use the friggin. They're like, no. Look like a gangster. I'm like, do I? Okay. It's weird that they tell gangsters they can't go in somewhere.

I know. If I'm such a gangster, let me in. Shouldn't you be scared to me? Yeah, you're supposed to be scared to me, motherfucker. I never really, that's just how Japan is. It's unspoken. They have their own sonnas, their own jams. They go to their own shit that they own.

Yeah. For as taboo as it is, that country has been doing tattoos longer than electricity has been around. That's why they do it hand poke like that because they were doing. No fucking tattoo machines. But were you finding people that were excited about your taxes in Japan? In Japan, I started going in 1992. Right. Doing murals on their lowriders.

Nowadays, I'm sure you have a ton of interest. But back then was it a little different? Back then, my friend came to me in 1992 and goes, A, Holmes. They want to fly you to Japan to paint a car. And I was like, what? You don't know anybody that had ever been to Japan at that point, right? Yeah. And what does that have to do with low riding?

No, man, you got to understand. They're into that shit. They look like homies, like essays, and some of them look like blood and crips. They go into a tanning booth, and they cook in there and come out with fucking cornrows on and Jerry curls and shit. You're like, what the fuck? And they were doing that shit, like thousands of them. Still to this day, when I was in Japan a couple years ago, they were so excited. These dudes and lowriders pulled up outside of the shop we're at.

They're like, just like Los Angeles. I'm like, whatever you say. Yeah. Like, I ain't seen one of them in L.A. You don't see a low rider in L.A. unless you go out of your way to see it. These dudes are driving around in low rides in Japan. Every day. Every day. Every day, all day.

I mean, that's just it is that they're perfectionists. You know what I mean? Like, don't underestimate the Japanese because when they obsess on something, they get it down. And they almost rescued the whole culture of low riding in L.A. Really? Because they bought all these cars overpriced. Wow. They pay double up for a rag in Pala.

And as a result, homies here were able to open up restoration shop. and they were able to have all this work. Wow. So they really did. By imitating us, they ended up helping us. That's amazing. So they're just so detailed, man. And we still go back over there.

I'm doing a collab with neighborhood brand where I'll drop those vans and like a whole capsule. Are there any other countries that in particular you have real strong relationships with in terms of doing work there and just the people? Sure. We go to Thailand every year. Okay. So Bangkok's a yearly trip and the high society. kids out there are all sleeved up going nuts and lambos and fucking it's crazy they have these 13-story malls with rose royce dealerships and then you walk outside and you're in a fucking slum right so but

they're beautiful people man then Thailand's a little rough yeah but it's not violent you know what I mean they're Buddhists and they're really really just real safe there right but uh we started going there and um we just got back from china so Asia's real heavy uh you know Hong Kong coming and but we go to Canada you know we go to other places that really embrace hip-hop Australia and shit yeah they love it for sure um can we talk about when you did this tattoo on Eminem because that was that like a seismic shift in how well-known you were because words can't express how big Eminem was at that time I mean it was crazy man it was a phenom rapper kid I seen them perform before I knew who

he was. And it was at one of bigger bees events in downtown. And we show up and walked on the stage in the whole crowd. You know, like, lose this. Not a lot of white rappers then, probably. No, they were not, people were not hyped.

And then five minutes into him rapping, that whole place was fucking quiet as fuck. Really? And, uh, I ended up meeting them through Cyprus and Stefan and, uh, they had the same management, you know? And once I tattooed him,

I no longer needed a portfolio. Back then we'd have portfolios. Right. Where we had all of our shit in photographs in these books, and we sent him to record labels. And you really didn't need to bring it around anymore just because the MNM tattoo was so famous? He was just on so many covers of magazines like that.

You know, with his fist, his arm out, bicep out. And he just did that. He didn't go crazy and do the rest of his arm, so that thing really stood out. And little by little, he would come and get more, you know. And it was a trip to see, someone that's a master of what he does and they almost have a lightweight glow

you know what I'm saying like Nas or Beyonce or someone like that walks in shit and you had to do it in a hurry because Eminem was about to go on a date Eminem was about to go on a date with yeah he had a date and he was like I was like you know I'm doing your daughter's portrait homes you know no pressure and shit and I'm at a studio in New York

which was above the original Supreme building and And yeah, so, you know, it's always a precious situation. When I went into the 36 chambers, the tattoo method man, everyone was there smoking, drinking, the lights, the chairs are, you know. Compare that to working in your studio with perfect lighting, your exact equipment. Is it a completely different ballgame from your perspective?

For sure. Being on the road, you have to pack everything in pelican cases. We got it polish now. We got it down because we've been doing it for 20 years. in the beginning in those days it was a lot harder working with one little light in a studio and everyone's it's like tattooing in a nightclub

in a crowd you know yeah I've walked into Sherlock Mafia sessions and there's been two dudes doing tattoos and there's like 40 guys in there a hundred blunts lit at the same time and I'm just like that's it I have a lot of respect for what you're doing right there my friend yeah like you'll never walk in and see like

an orthodontist surgeon taking off of someone's mouth and everyone's fucking smoking and shit yeah you know or someone getting those old ladies tits done right and how about you showing up the doctor's homeboy starts showing up hey what's so food what you're doing oh shit those look good people drunk as hell because that's how tattoo shops are they confused them for barbershops and they want to come in here and tell me their life story and yeah they like to hang out and bullshit so i had to over the years start narrowing that down and streamlining that so i could get shit done yeah definitely that so

when you look at your life these days how you like to structure it like you know I'm sure you could be doing 80 hours of tattoos a week if you wanted to how much do you buy it off where do you find your sweet spot at because I'm sure you don't you're not doing the tattoos because you need an extra couple hundred bucks in your pocket you're doing it

because it's enjoyable part of your life how do you schedule it for sure that that's a job in itself so you have to when I started watching M and 50 and all them when they were new and how they were moving they told me hey man you need a you need a manager you need some help like you're doing everything yourself you

negotiating the shit you're answering you know calls or email back and you're doing the tattoo so you need to uh let go some of the bread and bring someone in so that's when i think it started to change when i started to get some help my guy hunter he's been here for 13 years now uh he you know from england so when they're here a call back for me it's with the queen's english you know the price goes up right that's a good point but i have had Smiley from White Fence answering the phone, but it just didn't work out. So I try to keep the homies around and keep them employed if I can, you know what I mean? But Hunter's job is to be able to space all that out. So all your artists out there, eventually you're going to want to

space out your artwork. So there's much tattooing. We streamline that down a lot and only work pretty much on a lot of repeat lines and choice new ones. And then I have to do illustrations. So I have to pause from that and start drawing, say the clippers artwork, right, for logos and Tisha graphics and apparel. Then from there, you're going to go and you have to do a painting. Christian Hussoy is doing a thing with Ruka and I got to do a painting for that. And every day is like this for you where it's just, you're bouncing around.

You're doing tattoos, you're doing art, you're doing a million different things, right? Yeah. And then you've got to come to do an interesting. and be able to like break that shit down and have current projects going like staying like I just went back to China because I haven't been in China in 10 years and had to go reintroduce myself to a whole new generation of kids that are just learning about tattooing and hip hop right so you have to you have to be strategic but a lot of times too we do a lot of outreach right we go into junior highs and in high schools or bring kids to an event and I think tell them, you know, my formula, and I kind of dare him to do it and tell them that, hey, maybe if art's not your thing, installing car stereos, or learn how to do body and paint. Do you feel like you get a lot out of that experience of having those real conversations with people?

I do. I started doing it by mistake. My friends became art teachers. They were like, hey, man, the kids are listening to you. Come over, you know, you got tattoos. They'll listen. and they you know they just want to ask me how much to fix their fucked up tattoos kids in junior high and shit right i'm trying to give them the fucking keys to the to the game

right here yeah well how much to fix this you know but sometimes i say if one kid pays attention you did good you know and sometimes the one kid's me and as much as it's maybe not necessarily the most efficient use of your time i feel like it's important to do huge human shit like that, you know, just have a real human connection with some kid. Yeah. Can do a lot for your mind state. Especially when we do these type of, we have our jobs are kind of off of our imagination, our passion, our detail, our, we got a good, right?

So in order to keep in my head, the only way I can keep this is by giving it away. Yeah. Right. So my own man's like that. I've been raised like that of, you know what? You got a fucking dream life. and you need to help others along the way if you can't I like that the only way I'm gonna keep this is by giving it away that honestly that just hit me because that's

there's a lot of truth for that well when you try to hoard it when I tried to learn these old dinosaurs these angry motherfuckers they didn't want to give me nothing because they thought I was gonna use it against them and take their work and underbid them wrong wrong picture of me I was not I was not my intention but in a way they helped me because they made me take a part of airbrush and put it back together or figure out how a tattoo machine works and you know, you got to learn.

But I'm not going to be there every day for these youngsters. I'm not going to give them my cell number, so this is it. But hopefully I'm planning the seed that if they work hard, get the shit together, they can do it. Right, because I mean, you know, people inspire you. It's like you kind of owe it to other people to do that as well. I did get helped along the way. There were people that took the time and say, hey, tune, you're fucking up, bro.

Stay away from that dark shit. And, you know, I mean, also, I work for Hustler magazine. I've done Jules Jordan's logos. Oh, I know Jules, yeah. You know, so working for Hust, I mirrored Larry Flynn's limo. Really? I put pussies hidden into orchids on the side of his limo. You know, there's this hotel that we go to for brunch sometimes, and Larry Flint, we can always just tell because we see him in there.

a gold wheelchair and then also got this big ass car out front that says Flint he doesn't bring the low rider out yeah I mean it was just like a Lincoln limo okay but only he can get away with like life size nude women on the quarter panel of his car that's too funny

when you look at who do you have a crazy waiting list in terms of people who want to get tattooed by you is that something you deal with yeah it's most professional artists have a waiting list you know if they Don't you know watch out but do you have an oppressive list that forces you to make a lot of tough choices because you have some of people that are trying to get tattooed by you probably got clients you've tattooed a million times You want to come get new stuff, but it's impossible because I'm a one-man show yeah so

Half of our job is just trying to figure all that out how to how do you do that but then work on an animation project that you want for your own shit Tattooing so time intensive yeah and there's no short cause and it's very difficult But yeah, it's all about that. It's all about being able to be in different worlds. And then you're like, you've got to design this shoe. You need to put your shoe hat, like your sneaker head cap on and dive into that shit. And then staying relevant in different worlds is difficult. So what I try to do is just being me.

Right. And I got a 15-year-old kid, 14-year-old daughter. I'm watching them. I'm tripping on their shit, what music they're listening to. Right. You know, I'm 50 years old. my homeboys are complaining about modern day hip-hop. I'm like, you old motherfuckers, man.

You know how you sound complaining about fucking rock and rap music? Come on. But they're complaining more that music is shit. So I go, okay, are you trying to say that Kendrick Lamar is shit? Right. Like, well, no, no, not him. All right. What about Tierra Wack?

Oh, she's dope. She's creative. That's dope. You know who she is. Yeah, you got to stay on top of this shit. You know what I'm saying? like, doja cat. I go to my daughter, I go, baby, what do you think about doja cat?

She's like, Dad, I love that girl. I thought I was going to put my daughter on to something. My girlfriend just recently hit me with that. She's like, Doja Cat is so good. I love her. I'm like, oh, if my girlfriend knows about it, then it means it's starting to spread to the mainstream a little bit. I have news for everyone. These new art student kids are dope.

They know about old school hip hop. you can paint the album cover edit the video sing dance act and they're and they're dope on top of it so interesting

it's this whole new wave and there's a whole new wave of young people doing classic soul right like the Sincere's um there's uh KP Finningin again there's Mayor Hawthorne

there's um Duran Jones I just started getting tapped into some of the stuff, like new music that sounds like old school soul stuff. Yeah, I call it new vintage. Right. So it's like sounds like the Delphonic's in 1965. Yeah.

But that shit came out like two weeks ago. That's nice. And you're like, oh shit. This is dope. So the lakesiders, kids from East L.A. that are dope and digging all that. Let me ask you this. When you have something like a Drake or OVO collab, like where you're wearing right now.

Do you sort of end up doing the collabs that come your way? Do you sort of have a wish list of like this is the stuff I think is dope and I sort of reach out and try to make these collabs happen as I normally go? A lot of times the collabs, they come to us. But I only want to work with people I already fuck with. Like if I already support your brand or wear that shit, I'm down with that. So, you know, I fuck with Drake. I fuck with the music.

I've been to Toronto. I see how that city moves. I'm like, I fuck with all that shit. So when it came time, I like the way that the apparel's made, cut and sew, you know, right quality. And I fuck with it. And I was able to do what I wanted to do. That's really important that they let me do my shit. So, and you got to be careful with it.

You know, like sometimes you do shit and it don't blow it. Like I've done supreme designs. 15 years ago. Really? Yeah. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna kill them with it. And you know, it's like, people didn't know what Supreme was. I was like, fuck.

That's so funny that you got it a little too early. I mean, yeah. I mean, I was there, though, so I was like, I put my flag down before you, motherfucker. You can still say you did it at the end of the day, yeah. And I do holiday windows, like go leave the Supreme Store window. Oh, really? Wow.

Like, that is painstaking work. Really? And it's all done by hand and it's done backwards because you got to do. it on the other side of the glass and do it reverse when you get offered something like that is there any temptation in your mind to like have you know a team help you do stuff whether it's like on a mural or or or a tattoo or whatever like if you're doing a tattoo and there's just a big wall of black shit you get to fill in do you ever have an assistant come help you out well i have apprentices and i i definitely have a team when i show up okay so when i show up to do a gold leaf

window. I bring my assistant that has gone to school with Trade Tech where I went. I only went to one year of schooling, LA Trade Tech in 1988. And he went there in 2008. But he's been trained the same way. So he'll definitely help me with, you know, half the grunt work on that shit. Tattoos, I do them all myself, but they help me get the pattern ready, shrink this shit in Photoshop, size it up for the customer's arm.

now they're starting their shit they're prepping the customer's arms they're shed stepping up my station so i just really have to step in and go do you love downtown l a party you ever want to get out of there in terms of going to an area that might have more customers or no i mean i don't do walkins so i could basically i could be anywhere run the same thing i actually moved out of downtown a couple years ago and it just started getting crazy gentrified i mean everything was out of control right it wasn't the same place and a lot of the artists that uh grew up there are leaving you just can't afford it you know what i'm saying the studio i had for 3,500 a month it's 25,000 a month but i'm a member at soho house in downtown so there's my office in downtown really you just pull up there

whenever you need to have a meeting and do shit you know and but i have a full blown studio um in l-a so but it's super private but i'm building a showroom in san an monica so san an monica just lifted the band on tattooing they had a ban yeah well a long time what the fuck keep the riff raff out damn i didn't know that but now the riffraff are ball players and musicians they got millions yeah um so they've opened their mind you know right so that's my goal for for 2020 is a new studio that people can go take a picture in front of the goal it's still private and shit in appointment only but we'll do drops out of there and make shit happen at 50 do you feel as driven as you felt when you were 20 oh I definitely do I mean I don't know I feel

the same ways of like out of my eyes I feel the same age as these youngsters you know what I mean I look in the mirror and I'm like oh shit it's me but I feel like I'm very scrape the foam off the latte like this shit is so wide open we live in a place where if you decide to make a certain type of company you can do it right you know we went to india last year and we like came back on some super grateful shit humble shit you know yeah uh with hard work you could do everything and i'm just starting over and other things like animation right i just got uh i did something for dj ams documentary really and um right where i And I did something for that doc and I'm working on these other projects.

I can't really say right now, but I'll come back and tell you about them later. But yeah, I'm starting over again, you know, in that world. And doing, it always seems like we're starting over. But like tattooing and stuff like that, even though we got it down, now you're making supplies. You're doing signature machines. Oh, really? You do all that now, too. Yeah, the product world is out of control with that.

stuff really interesting yeah that's dope eventually everything will be branded you know I just did a collab with stance and I did my own boxers okay so it's like I've done an axe body wash you did that as well wow yeah with P-Rod so it's like eventually our shampoo our toothbrush boxers everything about our life one of us will be in the design room even if we don't own the corporation you ever get burnt in one of those situations where you felt like a company didn't really do you right and sort of took your name and did some stupid shit that you weren't cool with i mean i've worked with some real shitty people if that's what you're asking not so much the big boys because they can get sued right so i haven't had to sue none of them but i've it's a smaller

guys you're going to watch out for it's the guy you meet at the club or the coffee bean that's bragging i can do this i know this guy and a lot of times they're full shit and their thieves and the, you know, you gotta watch out for all those. So it's on the come up. Nowadays, I'm going in with a lawyer and a manager. You know what you're doing now. Contracts are being signed. I mean, it's pretty, you know, deep nowadays. But when the 20 years I wasn't there, I had to do a lot of the stuff on my own and got burned sometimes.

Sometimes you would get stupid overpaid. And then someone else would dodge you for the money. So it all kind of. works out in the end do you when if you were to be looking at somebody you know 20 22 year old kid or whatever and he's just started getting going in the game he reminds you or you what would be your way to advise him to get into the game because nowadays it's like you could do the apprenticeship thing at a tattoo shop you could also probably start making YouTube videos are you drawing or painting and create a fucking following on your own like what what kind of advice you you have to do everything

So you have to make a little channel for yourself Where you're drawing and sketching on YouTube Edit that shit yourself post it Go out there be at the right events Find out hey man there's a video shoot over here I'm gonna go to my friends a PA on I'm gonna go and help out Hang around other artists you know what I'm saying And start at the very bottom go to a tattoo shop you got a tattoo go get a tattoo

go get a tattoo. You like the way the vibe of that shop. Hey man, if you ever need any help, you need the fucking floor swept. I don't know if your bathroom's looking a little crazy. I can help out with that shit. That's how I got my apprentices. They were tattoo customers or clients.

And they ended up saying, how could I be in use? And next thing you know, they're going to fucking dinner with you. So it's like if you can at least get yourself into the position to start at the bottom and work your way up that's the way in see some people look at it wrong oh man i can't fucking take orders from no motherfell you can take an order from someone it better be some cool

motherfucker where at least they're playing music that you like and like you got to want to do it for free you're gonna do it for free for a long-ass time and just to get your name out there and just to be in the scene just to build a reputation being known as somebody that's easy to work with good to work with all of a sudden. And then if those original people that you've been working with, like maybe somebody else is going to take notice and maybe they're not treating you right, but you've got a nice reputation now. You're meeting more and more people. Maybe somebody's going to offer you a job. Somebody's going to, you know. That's how it stacks up on top of each other. It's small successes that you do on the daily that stack on top of each other that equals

something big a year from now. Same thing with fucking up, failing to call someone back. failing to pay someone back you own money to failing to do this all that shit stacks up and then you get hit over the head with like failure so I don't want to get too deep but if you you surround yourself by that shit you're gonna get burned that's for damn sure but how you act when you get burned usually dick takes on where you're gonna go in other words if you go into a ball and like fuck all these motherfuckers everyone's out to get me I can't catch your break everything's fucked up you're gonna be there ultimately it's all about survival and people end

respecting the people who actually are able to be around for a long time without melting down and fucking it up uh-huh and how you perceive what happens you're not in control of people places or things all is your control over is how you feel about it um there's people i can think of who even within the last couple months that we know who maybe they did get burned in a bad situation but then they acted like a bitch about it and they were all crying about it on social media and i might still kind of feel bad for them that they got burned in the situation but trust me we're laughing at you when we're just sitting here chatting because the truth is it's like to do you know you're showing too much emotion you're you're putting your shit too much there and blast people aren't going to

trust you if you're just out here acting like that emotional you know that's the hard part now everything's filmed oh shit yeah you got a camera on everything everyone's got a camera phone that busts I can't even go to a concert without everyone with their phone up, so that part is, it's bad. Who's going to watch those videos? Right. You know, you're there. Are you going to go home and watch that shit?

It's just crazy. Man, because the other day I was watching a video of Spider-Loke pulling up to chat with the game and Snoop Dog and maybe 2000. Or actually, no, it was GUNA. So it was like 2003, 4. And I'm watching it. And I'm just watching it. I'm thinking.

man, this shit looked crazy. And then I remember it, it looks crazy because you got all these famous motherfuckers in the room and there's nobody filming. There's nobody who's got their phones out. All that got missed. And that looks crazy. Yeah. That's shocking to me now to see that on camera.

It's shocking. Things have really changed just from that from 2000. 2000 was a great time, man. I mean, that was like, that was maybe the murder ink era. And we were just starting to put rims on cars. Like, oh, that should became like really available, available. and, you know, 3-1-0 mortaring, all that type of shit, man. L.A. was good, man.

But we still bust out lowriders. You'll see us on Hollywood Boulevard on a rather Saturday or Friday night. The cops these days are much more chill about that shit. They are about Lod Riders. Really? That's good to know. I didn't know that. Hip-hop cops.

You know, they know the lyrics to fucking dope man and shit. Now when you get in trouble for, like, skateboarding their BMX, the cops always, or the security guard always says the same thing. They always say, listen, man. I used to skate. I know what it is. It's cool, but you can't do this here. It was just so weird because, like, late 90s getting in trouble for BMX a skateboard.

They didn't understand. They'd be, fuck, you get out of here, you know? Yeah. Now everybody has much more of a cultural perspective of, like, more youth culture. Yeah, your family member, you know, someone that you like. You know who Tony Hawk is? Then don't yell at me for skating this rail. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crazy. Okay, so you've got, obviously, a million projects going on right now. But what's the stuff that gets you genuinely excited? What's really making you? Well, I'm going to do this radio station with Snoop Dog. Really? Because I've been doing a classic soul on Sundays for about 10 years. I call Soul Sundays.

And I spelled it like an ice cream Sunday. Nice. And it's something I just started to do to kind of share the soundtrack to my art. You know what I mean? The temprees, the stylistics, the dynamic superior. the what-nots, cameo, you know, Marvin Gay, Sam Cook, you know, from the classics to like crazy, hard to find. And I just started putting it and sharing it and was consistent with that. I never missed a Sunday.

Really? And then... That's the way to do it. Yeah, it's just like what you're doing right here. You know, I wasn't getting... At that time, I'm not getting nothing for it, really. You know, I still... Now I just do it because I love it.

But now through Instagram, it starts to build up and build up. you don't miss and you're consistent people will start to follow and trip out on it yeah but now it's going to go to like a two-hour show and uh play funk some blue-eyed soul some michigano soul um hard to finds to you'd be surprised a lot of kids don't know i'm your puppet or they don't know i heard it through the grave vine or like shit that we is very common to us i was just listening i heard through the Graveman in Hawaii a couple days ago. Me and my girl were driving along the coast and I fucking fired up the Marvin Gay

Essentials playlist on Apple Music and we were getting crazy. And there's so many good documentaries too right now. On Netflix. Showtime has one on Hitsville. Motown. I'm about to start watching this Wu-Tang series on

HBO or whatever. It's dope. I watched one of them that's really good. I've been hearing good things which is surprising me because I was kind of expecting to not hear great things. Yeah, now that I'm hearing good things, I'm extra excited. Yeah, it is really good. I'm not watching Mind Hunter. I like, uh, oh, you like that?

I like serial killers. I'm a couple episodes in. I'm still trying to get hooked on it. Yeah, I had to watch it all the way through and then rewatch it with my wife. And the second time through. You've seen the show Succession? I haven't seen that. Check it out.

Fire. HBO? Okay. About this like really rich media organization family that the father is like dying. There's this whole war for the kids. to take over the company and it's just fucking insane. When you look at me, what kind of tattoo do you imagine yourself doing on me

if that were to ever happen? You're running out of room, man. I got the thighs. I got my whole back. I'm sure you don't want to bite that off. Back piece is generally the, you know, when I was going to tattoo 50, he came to me to get something on his arm.

Really? And I said, you know what, bro? No disrespect, but I just, I want to do your back. You did the south side thing on his back? Yeah. Really? Wow, I did not know that.

That's so tight. Sure. I used it for like the campaign for his album. Yeah, for the movie. The movie too, right? Attach him. He had the picture of him with the baby and they showed him from behind, right? Yeah.

Who kid did a mixtape too. That was crazy with 50s back on there. Right. Did he end up getting all that removed? His sleeves. Just the sleeves, okay. Yeah, he didn't take his back piece off. Yeah.

Because those ones he got as a kid, like as a youngster before he got. buddy you know right i always thought black dudes couldn't get tattoos removed before he did it yeah that the lasering equipment now is is top shelf it used to be like that right where it's like the the laser just gets rid of the dark stuff so if you're black it's not going to be able to tell what's dark and what's your skin or something no it's more about the keloid maybe that the keyloid was already damaged skin okay and it shows more on darker skin so a lot of that comes with tattooing is knowing how to how deep to go how much to work the skin has a lot to do with it I meant to ask you this before, but back in the day, when you were saying, like, when black dudes first started getting tattoo for the first time, was that like I really unique challenged you at the time working with a completely different skin color, or is it kind of the same thing?

Well, everyone's human, right? Everyone has flesh the same like you. But if you culturally, if you go to Japan, like, say, a girl in Japan, like milky, bright white skin. Right. And then one of my homeboys, that's a construction Mexican kid, you know, my, you know, he's in the sun on. day might have leather skin you know what i'm saying so a lot of it has to do maybe to the person's diet or how much they're getting sun beat right but yeah darker skin's a little more of a challenge but uh i did push a tea you know what i'm saying oh that's tights and texen beckford they got ink you know what i'm saying yeah that's a pretty good if you're gonna cite a couple of black

references that's about as good as it gets push a teen tyson beckford that's excellence you guys are dope yeah no lies oh man i'm so honored honestly you haven't done a lot of like long-form interviews in a few years huh I have it when I was looking at your stuff on YouTube is primarily like 2013 2014 yeah felt back on the media since then huh yeah we do here there you know like I did something with vice a couple times we'll have a lot of out of the country stuff you know foreign stuff but yeah we tried to hold back a little bit I'm working on a documentary of 25 years of footage on me tattooing and it's directed by Estevan Audio.

That's going to be huge. Is the idea to produce it and then try to figure out who you're going to try to pitch it to in terms of the streaming services and stuff? We're pretty much clear on one of the big guys is going to get it, you know? If you had that come out on big Netflix documentary about your whole career and stuff, that could be another huge wave for you. That would be amazing.

Yeah, it educates a lot of people that maybe has seen this stuff or heard money but don't know maybe what I look like or, you know. My name goes farther than. and what people, to hear my name, that they're six foot tall. Do you have that a lot where like somebody might be talking for a little bit and then they realize you're Mr. Cartoon?

Yeah, or they don't figure it out. Just tell me that they got an appointment and shit. I'm like, oh, that's good, Holmes, that's good. That's kind of dope though, to have the name holds so much weight that it's even bigger than just your face? For sure. I'd much rather people know my name

and my heart over me. That's why I like animation. That's why you've gone so far as an artist. Because a lot of people at some point would have tried to make it more about their pretty little face talking on camera you really care about the art you know yeah you uh the mystery fact sometimes is is better uh to be seen but not noticed definitely you know but stay in there stay in the pocket i've been watching this bobby codwell

video from 1978 if anybody has youtube up what's uh who's he's a blue-eyed uh soul singer okay and uh And I just trip out on some of those old videos. I know it's kind of a segue right there, but YouTube, you can look up all these crazy old soul videos and shit and watch a gang of shit. And it's all I look at it seems like your feed came up on mine, and I recognized the logo in the Dame Dash interview and all that shit.

So it's crazy, like being able to see your shit and then Rico nasty. Man, you know all the chicks. That's tight. I don't think anybody in a million years could have expected Mr. Cartoon to name-dropped Tierra Wack and Riganis. That's a beautiful thing right there. I'm on it, man.

I watch my kids, man. You don't live through them. How old are then? 13, 14, 15, and 25. Oh, so they're heavy in the hip-hop, huh? Yeah, like my son's like, Dad, how about Twister? Do you like Twister? I was like, Twister.

I was like, damn, son, that's good. That's good. I go listen to Public Enemy, man. Listen to this. listen to schoolie D my son's obsessed with old school hip hop

and he was the model for the OVO shoot. Really? So if you see my little OVO shit, he's the kid. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, because I feel like nowadays it's kind of rare

that I meet kids who, but certain old school stuff, like you feel like there's a lot of tribe called Quest Love, the younger generation, which is kind of interesting to me because, yeah, they were popular when I was young

and they were really coming out, but it's, It's strange to see them hold much more weight than a lot of artists who were more popular than them at the time. Because it was the first time that we heard hippie rap. You know, really like not breaking the calm and tough guy, hardcore view of a rapper. Yeah. These motherfuckers were talking about daisies and Jimmy hats and shit.

We were like, what? That shit's tight. And that's what I think Cypress Hill broke through because they had their own style. and they made people like feel the certain vibe like weed vibe and then the the lyrics were there and the beats were crazy and dark and it was a good time to be alive and all that cybers hill definitely like let a lot of people know what weed was all about before they ever smoked weed oh for sure you know and even like the loonies putting their shit like taking just a piece of a cypress song and making their own shit and like look at snoop right now man you're just for

You gotta get Snoop on here. That's what I'm dying to make happen, yeah. Yeah, he just had Magic Don Juan. Oh, that's tough. I'm getting all his friends in here. Yeah, he's pimping. That dude, he's smoking a blunt out his nose. Oh, gee.

That green Cadillac. He said that he was just never going to let a blunt touch his lips again. I don't know why the nose is any better. I don't know how, I mean, the blunts were a New York thing, you know what I'm saying? And West Coast always had zigzags. And I'm not sure how that creeped over. because smoking on the cigar paper always seemed a little bit. It's a little abrasive.

Harsh, you know what I'm saying? But now everybody's on the backwards. What about you? No. Papers? You have papers. Well, the raws now, right? No, it's rosa.

Organic raw. I bought some zigzags when I was just in Hawaii and, you know, rolling with the white paper like that. It looks a little weird compared to the raws, yeah. The filters, be real, has glass filters. Cadillac one right now, you know what I mean? Can you smoke a bunch of weed and then do a tattoo? It's all good?

you know stuff is like you want to relax but uh it's good to be really focused when you work you know i feel like i've smoked enough weed that i can do most of the things that i need to be really focused for while i know it depends on the client yeah okay so if is barraq obama marco obama might just yeah you kind of like a cool glass of wine with them or some shit you know what i'm sorry well do it mr cartoon it's been a huge honor having you on podcast man appreciate it for real everybody out there

hopefully you guys enjoy this is honestly a huge honor for us and I feel like a lot of kids out there getting a lot out of this hell yeah good good life advice spewed out No Jumper

Mr. Cartoon coolest podcast in the world check us on YouTube SoundCloud iTunes like comment and subscribe hit up nojumper.com if you want to support appreciate every single one of you guys

thanks that's right