DECEPTIKONZ PROJECT

I’ve been missing in action the last couple of months, it has certainly been a really busy time for me but as I will explain there has been ample on my plate. About 2 months ago I agreed to take on a project for Dawn raid Entertainment art directing the (potentially) final release from Auckland Mainstays The Deceptikonz. It has been demanding and seen me don a couple of well-worn hats as well as one fresh from the shelf – namely trying my hand at directing some music videos.

I shouldn’t have to explain why Dkonz are so iconic and remain one of my favourite local hip hop acts but there are plenty out there ready to detract and perhaps they are only seeing a very small part of the decade long legacy – and it is a legacy. In my opinion there are only a very small handful of local Hip Hop artists who’s influence has transcended as far as Mareko’s. Personally I feel that Danny Haimona aka Hyper D from Dam Native and Johnny Sagala respectively hold the title for having an unparalleled impact on our local Hip Hop sound and subsequently empowering Maori and Samoan MC’s to believe in their ‘own’ voice. I can’t tell you how many people rapped like Danny throughout New Zealand after Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted dropped but I can tell you, no one spawned as many imitators until Mareko. I sincerely believe in the timeline of New Zealand Hip Hop there is before Mareko and after Mareko – he is that significant in my eyes. Albeit he may not have pioneered certain ‘isms’ when considered in the international sense, there was his use of the battle attitude and clever punch line driven raps that were not commonplace prior to his emergence.

TMD member and Mareko’s older brother Rimoni and I reminisced recently about JC’s first Battle For Supremacy at Factory in 2000 when Mareko stepped onto stage as a completely unknown MC – No one would have considered him in contention for taking the title let alone flipping the entire scene on it’s head. I remember looking at this big, quiet looking- very low-key dressed Samoan in a (now trademark) bucket hat and rugged skate shoes step on stage. At first he looked shy, sifting side to side a bit and looking at the floor – just for a second though before he went into battle mode. Prior to this NZ battles consisted of people that just looked stoked with them selves that they could freestyle consistently (often about nothing and also with a habit of inventing fictional words) once Mareko launched into battle, with razor sharp punch lines that made clear reference to his opponent, the game was changed. I just remember my sides hurting as he just came line after line making a mockery of MC’s – often the crowd response was so loud he had to pause between punch lines to allow for them to calm down again. It was like improvised stand up but didn’t fall short there – it was clever, he had great word play and most important he had flow.

Mareko went on to win 3 consecutive titles yet unlike a lot of renown freestyle MC’s – he could also deliver a great song and this was proven with the Deceptikonz first album ‘Elimination’. The reason I love this album is that it’s grass roots garage feeling Hip Hop – the majority of the beats were produced by Mareko on a demo version of Sound Forge which only allowed a dozen saves before you had to uninstall and reinstall the software. He used a home PC that by today’s standards would likely be reserved for using word or playing solitaire but most importantly this album introduced us to his crew, Savage, Devolo and Alphrisk. Dkonz have all the bases covered with this line up – Savage’s eventual success in the US was really not that surprising to me especially after his appearance in the Scribe “Not Many Remix” video directed by Chris Graham. At this point we see the emergence of another calibre of Hip Hop artist – the type rarely seen here. He’s the guy that can just growl out a hook and make it an anthem and quite frankly look so fucking cool doing it. Honestly I think you are lying if you say your hair didn’t stand up on end when you first heard his part at the start of ‘Not Many Remix’ – I know mine did.

Devolo is a really unique MC, he’s always had an almost rigid and mechanical delivery and seemingly simple lyrics but he is one of my favourites. At the heart of why he is so good you might have to be an Aucklander or at least have grown up around Islanders but there is such an inexplicable swagger that he has that is ‘so Tongan’ – just the way he phrases things, the nuances in his pronunciation, it’s so dope. I never knew quite what it was but David Dallas was at my house speaking about it when he had just recorded the demo version of ‘Indulge Me’ and was planning to get him to sing the bridge part. Saves also said the same thing the other day. Devolo is time and time again one of the local MC’s who will leave me reflecting on a line for ages because maybe they aren’t really that ‘simplistic’ at all in fact sometimes they are really complex. I rate an MC that can do that – It’s an art. Devolo also has the X-factor on camera, working with him is a breeze and now after editing his performances on 4 videos I really appreciate that!

Alphrisk is really the most understated member of Dkonz but someone I believe has been so consistent and now really emerged so strongly on this new album. I had seen Dkonz play a few times before I actually met Alphrisk and just assumed he was the same age as the other guys. I was at Dawn Raid in 2002 working on the Disruptiv Logo with Tim Checkly and Alprhisk walked past in a school uniform! I turned to Tim and said “What the?!” and he was like “yeah, he’s still at school!”. It spun me right out at the time but also makes me appreciate where he was at lyrically even more. Alphrisks ‘Best Kept Secret’ street album still remains a favourite of mine and truly stands the test of time. His verses on Evolution are killer and I believe this guy has a long career ahead of him.

So now you understand, I’m a big fan of these guys and a friend and over the years have really followed them. When Andy Murnane asked me to art direct the entire Dkonz project there was no hesitation. In my typical form it required me to leap into the deep end a bit and hone my video and editing skills to bring 4 internet videos to fruition. This was done on a shoestring budget and in a rapid time frame all while on deadline at my regular job laying out Rip It Up.

The videos were shot in 3 days with my Panasonic HDC-SD1 video camera equipped with a very basic DOF (Depth Of Field) adapter and a collection of Nikon lenses I gathered from markets, garage sales, second hand stores and on Trade Me. A fact a lot of people don’t know is these videos along with Urban Development videos I made were all shot upside down and flipped in Post. This is because I couldn’t afford a vibrating DOF adapter so everything is captured this way. It was disorientating at first but I’ve mastered the art and retrained my eyes! Assisting, lighting and general sharing of knowledge and opinion was handled by my good friends Rimoni and Lucko Prawito, make up by Alphrisks wife Vanu Maoate and everything else from scheduling to hitting the playback was handled by Safia Sayid. It’s a small but great team and the shoots were heaps of fun – I learned a lot during the process too, it was like a crash course!

Evolution – Album Intro

‘Like What’ ft P-Money

‘We Here’ ft David Dallas

‘2012’

The other part of the project was the general art direction and illustration which I did with some last minute help from Elliot Francis Stewart aka Deus. The first thong was the reworking of the brand, primarily via my reinterpretation of the Dkonz logo into a ‘NETCH’ treatment. There is a limited edition hand signed print of this available with a copy of the album when you buy a ticket to the farewell concert on July 10^th!

Then there is the cover art – The front is featured at the start of the post but here is the full fold out poster, which also includes a looming ‘Pyramid Dude’. Deus helped out with the Church and the bats!

And lastly I got to shoot the video for the first official single and title track ‘Evolution’. This was shot on a Canon 5D Mk II and if you get a chance to check out the photos over at Rimoni’s and Mareko’s blogs. It was a historic night with a lot of NZ Hip Hop royalty in the building.

So people, there you have it. Check out the videos, if you like the tracks- buy the album and if you are in Auckland July 10^th then see you at the concert. It’s my birthday that night so I’ll be in high spirits and most likely in the front row singing along to my favourite Dkonz songs. Let’s party like it’s 2012!!!!

URBAN DEVELOPMENT EPISODE 2

This is the the second part in our series of features about the Urban Development Outdoor Gallery Project in Auckland, New Zealand.

In this episode Berst One conducts a thorough interview with me about the motives and technique behind my current approach to painting. We speak in depth about what it is for a Graffiti Writer to embrace being an artist, the influence and thinking behind our current aesthetic and shed some light on some local graffiti history and how that has impacted the piecing style of today.

http://www.vimeo.com/10134130

MY STYLE JOURNEY: PART 1

In this first part I want to shed some light on perhaps one of the biggest influences in my career. It’s not one specific person but more a place and the people that live in it. I’m speaking about my Neighbourhood!

It’s amazing to consider how the course of your life can changed so dramatically with a move from small town to the big dirty inner city. In 1984 my Mother and Stepfather packed us up and we made the move from Palmerston North to Auckland. Initially we lived around Levonia Street in Western Springs, spent some time in Grey Lynn but eventually ended up settled at the bottom of a dead end street on the cusp of Morningside and Kingsland.

First Avenue, Kingsland 1987.

These two suburbs (which are almost the same suburb, only divided by a park and a bend in the road) are two old but small inner city suburbs located in the Mt Albert ward in Central Auckland.  When we moved there the area was in a transitional stage, an eclectic mixture of industrial area, run down shops and old villas inhabited by a diverse range of people from many cultures. Our street was mainly Samoan and Cook Island families, a handful of Pakeha families and one Maori family who were part of the Twelve Tribes Of Israel and threw epic parties at the bottom of our street. My school, Mt Albert Primary was even more diverse. My class had every type of pacific people you could think of from Maori, Cook Island, Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Tokelauan, Fijian, Fijian Indian, Korean, Malaysian… The list goes on. It’s fair to say that 1980’s Auckland city was as stark a contrast to Palmerston North as you could get and one I’m very thankful to have experienced first hand.

In the park next to my house was an old school building owned by the Waipereira Trust and practise room for the legendary Herbs and later on Che Fu and the Crates. Across the park was School Road and parallel to that the infamous Don Croot Street. It’s hard to fathom that these were considered some of the roughest parts of town when compared to today but my first experiences walking down Don Croot left me in shock.

Directly across the road from our house lived the Satele family. It’s still their family home ’til this day and at any time as many as Four generations of family have been in that household at once. The father, Fatau Satele (Perhaps someone from the Satele family can help me the that spelling? The whole Samoan T as K’s thing gets me all the time!) is an icon of First Avenue, the neighbourhood patriarch. As a kid I always remember him being out the front of his house, just chilling on the steps, almost keeping an eye on the street and keeping up to date with his neighbours and everything going on in their lives. Any one that was around the Auckland scene during the 80’s and 90’s will talk about the Satele’s because brothers Marvin (R.I.P), Junior and Andrew were some of the earliest B-Boy’s and DJ’s in my neighbourhood. My awareness of Hip-Hop as a culture that you participate in as opposed to one you merely consume literally came from seeing and hearing these guys hone their respective crafts in their basement bedroom and front carport.

The Megazoids: Junior Satele, Troy O’Dea, Lua Iusitini, David Lynch, Jason Rowe. Lua, David and Jason were also members of Smooth Inc, one of New Zealand’s Pioneering graffiti crews. Photo from Nick D’Angelo

Having never seen much more than the odd bit of political or crudely done gang graffiti in Palmerston North, the standard of the writing around my area was hard not to notice or be impacted by. I used to walk to school Through the School Road Park, past the ‘FLY’ piece on the old school building then on to the Morningside shops, dropping in to Sima’s Superette, then continuing on to the tracks across from the KDV building and down past Morningside Station. There were some pieces painted there by the first Auckland kings of graffiti ‘Smooth Incorporated’ or ‘Smooth Crew’. The ‘Merry Xmas Smooth’ piece with the two characters really stuck in my mind for a long time and particularly the way the characters were depicted, specifically their outfits which shaped my primary school aged perception of what writers must look like. Even after the council buffed the center portion of the wall, the characters on the raw brick remained for another few years.

Image taken from the 1986 book ‘Street Action Aotearoa” by Mark Scott. These photos were taken by Gil Hanly.

Morningside Station. Photos by Jamie McCready

The Book ‘Street Action Aotearoa’ by Mark Scott came out in 1986 although I only discovered it by accident at the Auckland City Library one day in the mid 90′s. The book is very rare given that Mark Scott ended up self-publishing a very limited run after struggling to convince any mainstream publishers of the projects historical and cultural importance. The book mainly focuses on the explosion of Hip-Hop, mainly the B-Boy element throughout New Zealand during the 1980′s. It is a really special book in that it discusses Hip-Hop in the Aotearoa context and why it resonated with Maori and Polynesian youth at that time. The last section of the book is a feature on the Smooth Crew with incredible photos by legendary photographer Gil Hanly. This section shows my neighbourhood the way it was when we moved there and has some quotes from Claude Iusitini, the leader of Smooth that still hold true today.

“Our initial ideas might come from New York but we have to fuse our own identity as well… Eventually our bombing in Aotearoa will become our own style, not an imitation.” -Claude Iusitini/Street Action Aotearoa

A photo of Claude From Street Action Aotearoa, Photo by Gil Hanly

Smooth Crew at work. Later on I sort of took ownership of these walls and painted them into the mid 00′s. It was always felt like it was my duty as one of the only writers from that area painting pieces to represent there. once again, photo by Gil Hanly

“They can say, Shucks, them’s my roots up there… All the kids who don’t know about their culture in the broad spectrum of things, it would help in a really big way to bring all of us together.” -Claude Iusitini/Street Action Aotearoa

Smooth planning a wall. I love this shot, so crazy seeing such young photos of Lua and Jason Rowe. Jay has always been one of those iconic Auckland Hip-Hop people. Photo Gil Hanly

The Pacific Cinema in kingsland, now the Royal Jewelery Studio. Photo by Gil Hanly

“Every group here has its own culture, its own art and we can bring it together for everyone with our art… Take the designs you get in Tapa… Or like Maori has a flowing style, Rarotongan has a natural style wit flowers, hibiscus – You could use Hibiscus instead of clouds and the Samoans have a formal style, straight organised style… All these styles we could use. Do Koru instead of arrows.” -Claude Iusitini/Street Action Aotearoa

Smooth Crew ‘Monster Sale’ wall on Queen St, 1984. Photo by Gil Hanly

Another really influential piece from my area during that era (1985). I will discuss this more but note the Copyright signs on the tags. Photo by Nick D’Angelo

Of course for good measure here is a really classic joint and maybe one of the better known works by Smooth as it was printed in Spray Can Arts Auckland section. Photo by Nick D’Angelo

I will continue this soon with more great old stuff and tributes to NZ’s kings of old. Thanks again to Nick D’Angelo for use of the photos and thanks to all the influences mentioned in this post. If you ever get your little mitts upon a copy of Mark Scott’s book, know you are holding treasure!