Yo, what up, my peoples. I was going through some of my pics and dug these up from one weekend in 2009. I realized that I haven’t shared these with anyone yet so now is as good a time as any. Peace.
Architecture in Manhattan
Architecture in Manhattan
Skyscraper in Manhatttan
Skyscrapers and Tall Buildings
Skyscraper in Manhattan
Another Shot of Those Skyscrapers and Tall Buildings
I dug up some throwback flicks the other day. 2 of my older cousins and myself break-dancing on cardboard in my basement. I’m gonna go ahead and credit these 2 guys for introducing me to hip hop. These were taken the night of my little sister’s christening, January 1984. Coincidentally enough, these photos also are probably the first I had ever taken myself. I guess we grabbed my mom’s or dad’s camera on our way downstairs to keep it funky.
My mom’s older brother I guess thought it would be funny to take a picture of me fresh out of the hospital with his pack of Bambu rolling papers in my tiny hand. Myself, I did not see the pic for the first time until about 31 years after it was taken. I thought it was pretty cool and so I used it to make the cover art for my song, “Mister Burnem”, off my 2nd album, “How to be Hard”. 🙂
Those of you who know me know that I am a graff junkie. Although I did not start writing and paying attention to graffiti until 1991, I have an older cousin who used to write back in the mid 80s. He’d drag me and another one of my cousins along with him as he caught tags on streets and trains from Flatbush to Sunset Park to Bay Ridge to Canarsie.
I didn’t know much about graff back then. The trains were bombed but I couldn’t read any of it aside from straight letter pieces and such. One thing I did know, though, was that shoe polish was popular, and one thing we always seemed to have in our house was shoe polish. Anyhow, can you see the “H” on the wall in this pic (that’s my sister chilling in the basement of our house in Brooklyn, circa 1991; don’t mind her)? That was me practicing writing with shoe polish when I was like 7 or 8 (which would have been 1985/1986 ;)).
I didn’t care about catching tags or getting up back then but I guess I was curious about writing with shoe polish. 😀 I remember there were circular grooves in the plaster of the wall which made it hard to write, and that’s why I wrote a capital “H”, because it’s made up of 3 straight simple lines. The grooves in the wall made it hard to write anything with a curve (“O” or “C”) or diagonal lines (“X”). I guess I could have also gone with “T” or “E” but I didn’t and I don’t remember why. So that’s how that “H” ended up on that wall. It’s probably still there. 😀
Visiting my Pops Upstate - 1993Well, in early 1989 my pops ran into trouble with the law and was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison. He never really asked much of me, but the first time I ever went with my mom to visit him in jail, he told me, “Don’t ever do what I did.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me directly about what he did for a living, and although he didn’t come right out and say what it was, exactly, I knew what he meant and he knew that I knew.
The #1 reason why I never got involved in drug business, if you haven’t already guessed, is my mom. Before that fateful first visit I paid to my dad, she made me promise that I would not ever follow that same path. I was only eleven but I guess that even at that young age I was a man of my word.
