Askew One interview, 2005 flashback

 

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.