Before I get into the meat of this post, I need to address some commentary from a Strange Wars blog post in regards to this cover. While yes, certain galactic imagery and styles were borrowed from iconic pop-culture entertainment, I must say that conceptually, albeit a bit naive, the creative direction was a little more subversive than a Canal St. knock-off. It was a stab at the abusive policies of the NYPD which at the time, under  Mayor”Adolf” Giuliani, were invigorated by Giuliani’s “Quality of Life” manifesto and seemed to be completely out of control and power drunk, stormtrooper style.

While I never experienced it directly, too many people that passed through the label had too many stories of recurring civil rights infringements and unnecessary roughness at the hands of the po-po.

For me the cover asked a simple question, “No matter how far we come, will being black (or of color) and bumping hip-hop from a top-down Cadillac always be criteria for getting a smackdown by  five-oh?” The assumption was that the rebellion was successful, the Empire destroyed and now the X-Wing armada patrolled the Universe. Sir Menelik is casually cruising through with his lady and without fail comes the whooop whooop.

So yes Strange Wars, the Star Wars theme did promote Sir Menelik’s futuristic style of flow and lyrical content using recognizable imagery that I didn’t originate, and yes the cover does qualify as a bite since I did juxtapose Roper’s illustration over the universe with an X-Wing in hot pursuit and gave the back side credits the signature Star Wars crawl, and yes it’s commercially appealing at face value, however the underlying concept and meaning was definitely meant to be more rebellious, conscious and incendiary guised under something that was tasty sweet… which at the time, seemed to me something so important and intrinsic to hip-hop… Crafty wordplay meant to get messages past the censors.

With that said… I’d like to get back to Arik Roper.

Arik and I met at time when I was transfixed and inspired by the old school 60s psychedelic rock posters. I couldn’t get enough and without Google Images, Flickr, or high-speed internet in general, it wasn’t so easy to get a fix. It may have been ‘96, maybe ‘97.

I can’t remember clearly but, as Rhonda Byrne would probably have it, Arik and I inevitably randomly met in some bar that no longer exists somewhere in the East Village or Alphabet City, Money-Making Manhattan of course. He had his sketchbook with him, as he always did, and I put my John Woo style double fisted scotches down and substituted one addiction with another.

We became friends. He seemed truly passionate about his work, loved what he did, with the good and the bad, and worked at it all the time, pretty much the main criteria for me in wanting to work with someone so I tried to bring him into as many projects at Rawkus as I could.

Pish-Posh "Up Jumps the Boogie" Full-Length CD

While Sir Menelik (with Kool Keith)’s 12″ for Space Cadillac (pictured above) and Pish Posh’s “Up Jump The Boogie” Full Length (pictured left) were probably the most notorious of all of our creative collaborations, I think my favorites were the black and white 12″ covers we did for the other side of Rawkus… The side of Rawkus that had us staying out Monday 1997 Koncrete Jungle nights at Coney Island High on St. Marks, until the wee hours, then a slice from across the street, before heading home.

Jungle and Drum and Bass had infiltrated the NY underground. The accelerated urban beats that instigated dance and frenzy. Some NYC producers and DJs started accelerating our Rawkus singles into their mixes and producers across the Atlantic, from London’s Trouble on Vinyl crew, started creating captivating remixes of the Rawkus underground hits. It spawned a parallel direction in the music we were putting out on vinyl.

Rawkus Raw.Kuts Little Guy Logo

Heavy Beats Little Guy Logo & 45 RPM Logo

On the visual side, this proposed a new challenge. Rawkus needed a new visual language to embrace this tangential direction. Since sales expectations wouldn’t reach the levels that our hip-hop singles celebrated, the decision was made to print the 12″ covers in B/W with a B-Side only diecut hole, posing a new challenge since I’d long gotten used to working in full color. What I realized was that I had a chance to explore a new style for a gritty young underground sound and subculture that deftly blended so many different cultural influences and sounds.

Being limited to designing in black, white and all the shades of gray in between, I started to see the design possibilities of within the subtleties of the 1C offset printing process. By scanning images, converting and converting them to black and white bitmap images, I found I could layer them in Quark (InDesign was years away), and by assigning them different percentages of black coverage, it gave the graphic designs numerous levels depth. I scanned and distorted black and white photocopies of black and white photocopies, that were crumpled, photocopied again, and then scanned in and layered in the layout. This gritty layered deconstructive urban style was born while walking and living the New York City streets. Like the numerous layers of street snipes and stickers laid over other street snipes and stickers over other street snipes and stickers, reinforced by endless subway tunnels connecting to sub-tunnels and super-tunnels, New York City was like 1000s of layers of dusty photo transparencies combined.

If you look closely at the designs, you’ll see distressed scans from newspapers, my notebooks… so many little moments of inspiration whose references I’ve long forgotten.

I also started playing with the barcode similar and preceding Japan’s Design Barcode, Inc.’s Bar Code Revolution Book in 2005. Not only did the creative execution fall into my lap. I was also in charge of production and making sure the Rawkus product fulfilled all retail requirements.I fully studied and mastered the barcode printing and scanning process and later found it could be used as a design element, as long as there was an area where the barcode could be clearly scanned.. While Design Barcode, Inc’s book and website makes the process seem really complicated, possibly to increase sales of their barcode design services, it really isn’t. It’s binary… really just simple combination of 1’s and 0’s translated into graphic elements when scanned translate to numbers. Once you figure out how the bar code works, which takes about 5-10 minutes, you can proceed to play with it endlessly.

R. Notorious J "Impulse" b/w Shaun Bear "Take It Like a Pro" 12" (Cover)

R. Notorious J "Impulse" b/w Shaun Bear "Take It Like a Pro" 12" (Back Cover)

Barcode scanning lines in the white box produces the number: 636777015914 letting retailers know the artist, title and format

Inspired by Paul Klee's "The Twittering Machine"

Arik Roper's Alien Girl Close-Up

Track Listing Close-Up

Low % of Black Producing Moments of Subtle Depth

Pish-Posh (DJ Wally) "Corrupt Cops" b/w "NY Undercover" 12" (Cover)

Pish-Posh (DJ Wally) "Corrupt Cops" b/w "NY Undercover" 12" (Back Cover)

Mind if I Watch? (Text Scanned from Village Voice Classifieds)

In Search of Lonely Housewife (Text Scanned from Village Voice Classifieds)

Arik Roper's Alien Girl II Close-Up

There Was Story in the Paper Reporting Unethical Medical Behavior

Credits Close-Up

Further Experimentation into Layering of Distressed Imagery Using % Concentrations of Ink

IQ Collective Drum-n-Bass Remix of Mos Def's "Universal Magnetic" (Cover)

IQ Collective Drum-n-Bass Remix of Mos Def's "Universal Magnetic" (Back Cover)

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FLAUNT SNOOP DOGG COVER AUGUST 2002

I can’t exactly remember when I was called to do this job, but it came by way of recommendation by Bronwyn Keenan (who has since become a great friend and client at The Guggenheim)  and Jacqui Mellar.

Luis Barajas, publisher and editor at FLAUNT, wanted to start a program that would have guest creatives design the covers.

I was picked to do the first one.

It was still during the Nobody Creative years and it was sometime in 2002 before I headed to Miami to start The Creek South Beach Hotel project.

The Nobody Creative Studio 3000 sq ft studio loft was very quiet in those day still reeling from post 9/11 inactivity. I was having a hard time finding inspiration and I stumbled across a book about stock and bond certificate design at St. Marks Bookshop. I can’t remember the name of that book (If anyone knows this book, please reply, I’d like to add it to my design book collection). At the time I was fascinated with the intricate details of currency. The the stock market took a kamikaze nose dive. I was broke, waiting for a client to pay. I just bribed the gas and electric guy to come back in 4 days with my last $13.46. Some members of a Chinatown “syndicate” were threatening to break my legs, and I couldn’t stop daydreaming about being able to barter the lint and tobacco shavings in my pocket for that $3.50 Chinatown lunch buffet take out plate.

Famished and dizzy, my mind escaped into a flight of fantasy and things fell into place.

The cover was set up in 4C, with spot varnishes, embossing and debossing. I even embossed my then designer name, “nobody”, that carried on from the Rawkus days, in braille right in the middle of the cover.

I wonder if FLAUNT has gotten to my invoice yet?

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