Akld graffiti artist Askew One interviewed by hiphopnz.com site July 2005, revived via Wayback Machine
How did you start getting into grafiti,who & what
were influences? and how old were you when you knew it was something
you really wanted
to take seriously.?
I started dabbling with graffiti (Actually out
on the street) around
1993 which was my first year of high school. It was just a 'Being
Cool' thing at first, hanging with my friends late at night at the
morningside station, being a reckless and rebellious teen. I
started graffiti for a lot of the wrong reasons. But at the end
of '94 I got my hands on my first copy of Subway Art and Spray
can art and my world was changed forever. I changed my name to
Askew (Got the word from a Freestyle Fellowship Lyric in 'Park
Bench People'),I chose it for the balance of the word.
Growing
up in Morningside and Kingsland I saw work from a lot of
the pioneers of the Auckland and greater NZ scene. That really
influenced me early on in life with my whole art and drawing
style. names
that I would mention are: Smooth Crew, Fly, USP (The original
line up), and a little bit later on the public mural work
of
DLT, Dan Tippet, Opto and of course the great style of the
DAF crew (AaronB, Merk, Dewz). The writer that had the biggest
impact
on me and the scene in general was the notorious Tank One
from Bad Habits crew.
when he came out here from Sydney, he started dropping throw
up's and fat cap tags in really public places and it just
really hyped me even more to be a prolific writer.
Ok tell us about about disruptiv , what did you
have in mind when
starting it?
Disruptiv just started out as a means of survival.
an entity that allowed me to paint and do the things I like doing
full time, a means to promote myself and invoice and make money
legally. It's grown pretty huge, like bigger than I could have
ever foreseen though.
You must be pretty happy doing something you love
for a full time job?
Yeah it's still stress sometimes, just being the
part owner of a company that is so multi-faceted. I never thought
we would have employees or a gallery, a magazine or be involved
in working with such a diverse range of talented people, but
in less than three years all that has happened. I am a happy
person most of the time any way.
Of course I guess it's not all fun and games ,
what have been some of
the major challenges you have faced in setting up the business?
Starting with no capital. having accrued so much
debt prior to this venture. Living out of each others pockets,
not knowing where the next dollar was coming from. the doubters
and the straight vindictive. we went through it all in the first
year.
I know this isnt true for alot of all writers
but there seems to be
alot of immaturity and beef around what's your take on it?
Yeah it has a lot to do with ego and the fight
to be seen and heard.
Also it is a youth artform so the age of the artists themselves
can vary from about 11 to 40-ish. So imagine putting a bunch
of people from such different stages in their life together in
one room and expecting them to all get along 100% of the time.
But if you are talking about how people behave on these forums,
I don't know if it is always the best way to monitor the actual
dynamic of the scene. Over all, I probably have had the most
beef out of any writer in NZ. but of that supposed beef very
little has eventuated past the odd scuffle, exchange of words
or maybe a couple of crossed pieces. over all it's just posturing
and you do grow out of it.
Whats your honest opinion about the current state
of hiphop in aotearoa
( from both a musical and graff pov )?
I've always been a big advocate for what's happening
locally. Now is such an interesting time and one I watch both
excitedly and nervously.
it is a time of growth and diversification in both the underground
and the commercial marketplace. It's the era of our first Rap
superstars, our first commercial hip hop ventures (On this type
of scale at least) and there's a certain amount of resistance
and testing the waters. I like having the choices we have now.
We have MC's ranging from Dei Hamo to Breaking Wreckwordz, we
have bombers and graffiti artistes! choose your flavour.
Now of course alot of cats wont know that you are
also pretty handy
with a mic in hand , tell us about about how you got into rap
singing and your crew the tomb raiders.
haha! Ok it's a funny story and the motivation
behind my actions probably differ from what a lot of other people
would think. For me, MC-ing was actually the first element I
really wanted to excel in. In 1990 I used to write my stupid
little raps, influenced by whatever garbage I heard on the radio.
My step father is a musician and makes guitars and fixes amps
etc for people as a part time job. he always had keyboards, drum
machines, mics and all the equipment necessary for a young kid
to experiment with and pretend to be his favourite rapper in
his bedroom.
I started writing entire songs at age 11 for all
my school mates to perform over my crudely programmed drum beats
in front of the school assembly. It was the wackest most uneducated
shit ever, believe me. I'm so embarrassed but I know it's time
to tell this story. man I thought Hip Hop was like what was being
played commercially at that time (90-91) like all about the wack
dance routines and rapping like" 1-2-3-4
Yo DJ play that beat...blah blah" and the parachute
pants and shit.. honestly I was doing that and only very occasionally
credible artists were slipping onto the radio at that time like
LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy, De La Soul and I was
listening to all that at the same time just not differentiating
any thing from the other.
And then at the end of my 1st form
year I heard NWA, Brand Nubian, Main Source just so much dope
stuff.. man it just opened my eyes and ears up. By the start
of High school I was really just listening to so much Hip Hop,
like great golden era stuff and just writing and trying my
hardest to be heard as an MC.
In 3rd form one of my best mates
at school
was Oli Green from Urban Disturbance's younger brother and through
him we just got access to so much stuff. and we learnt about
what was cool and real in their eyes. About Freestyling and
we set up a weekly cypher at the ponsonby community centre. Between
3 of us we had a complete DJ set up and PA. A lot of people
came
through that place, like people that are big now like Che Fu,
Tourettes was there, just so many cats ended up at our parties
and cyphers. It was all freestyle and with lots of weed and
liquor. that shit shaped my life.
I used to go and MC with my
mates and
then cruise out and tag or take a walk down the train lines.
A lot happened that turned me off MC-ing though. I quit drinking
and lost a lot of confidence in the process.
False confidence albeit but still a necessary part of my
process at that stage in my life. Graffiti just took over,
the anonymous
fame and the adventure.
Eventually I just stopped rhyming
all together and didn't even write a single line again until
about
nearly 3 years ago. I have to give credit where credits due,
Tourettes gave me the encouragement to give it another go
and also Cyphanetik played perhaps a bigger part than he
knows.
As you may know I just fucked around with mixtape freestyles
for
the most part, but late last year I felt the urge to write
some complete songs.
I heard Esspro's beats online through
here and
then emailed him about it. we started working together
immediately. I knew in all hoesty that I could never listen to
a whole
album of myself so I would never wish that on anyone else
and thats
when I approached Megatron. things just clicked and Tomb
Raiderz was born. 3 months later we have completed a whole
album of
material which will be released on some sort of scale in
about a month
or so!
You have been involved in the local scene for a
long time , what are
some of the changes you have noticed for better or worse?
I don't know if there was even a solid scene before
the late 90's. It was more like several isolated crews or groups
of people doing there thing. Now there are solid networks. There
is industry, the is also underground as well. it is all thriving
and alive. it is self sustainable and diverse.
Your also a member of the stick up kids which is
home to many of the
top writers in the world , how did you hook up with them?
Through Can 2 from Germany. We brought him out
a few times and in that time both Exist and I really clicked
with him. Our Birthday's are all really close together and on
each of our B'days we got put in the crew.
It's real cool and real humbling for me at the same time. The
line up has actually changed a bit last month and heaps of writers
have been given the option to move on and the rest of us are
still down and going to rep SUK to the fullest so look out for
our new moves this year.
Running your own gallery now , do you find the
'art community'
accepting
of graffiti as a legitimate art form or?
I don't care what the general public think anymore.
enough people come here and buy art to sustain us having a gallery.
If that answers the question? I'm not interested in legitimising
the art form, I am concerned with feeding talented people who
deserve to live from what they are good at.
Who in your opion is really pushing boundries
with their work?
So many people eh.. Deus, Fiasko, Sens, Gasp, just
so many people locally have just hit the point where their idea's
have clicked into place and they are going in crazy directions
and tangents. I'm proud to be one of the artists that have put
in the hard yards to expose this work to the world.
What advice do you have for any upcomming
writers out there?
Just do it. be true to yourself. Learn the history.
get some foundation and do real letters before you go on to doing
tricky stuff. All the advice older people told me when I asked
for it and at the time I thought they were being narrow minded
and mean to me.
Now a few questions from our members ... askew-i remember u sayin that u been in
some old adds. wot adds were
they?
Haha.. so many dumb ads. it's just work though.
It's hard to be an artist with no other source of income and
survive off that 100% of the time.
askew-will we see a disruptiv video??
with live action?
Yip.. it's definitely on the cards, also we are
gonna make more of a move into publishing books and releasing
music.
Askew: Back in the day 1990 - 95 grafitti and tagging
was a serious
offence if caught by the cops, how much do you think it has changed now, and what are corporate responses to graff when they approach
you
to do a piece?
The penalties for graffiti are way more heavy
now than in 1990. They actually keep a good tab on what each
artist does and take civil cases against you when you get caught.
so not only can you end up with a criminal record, but you might
end up bankrupted by the city.
Corporate's are the same they've always been. It doesn't mean
that we shouldn't at least try to educate them on some level
when we get the chance.
