Decoded Clothing

JAY-Z x DE-CODED - Jay- Z Wearing De-Coded on stage with Rhianna...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:16:46 -0400

JAY-Z x DE-CODED - Jay- Z Wearing De-Coded on stage with Rhianna

Scull, Jean Michel Basquiat, 1981

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:50:39 -0500

Scull, Jean Michel Basquiat, 1981

“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:46:42 -0500

“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.”

-Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basqiat Reebok’s

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:43:19 -0500

Basqiat Reebok’s

Campbell’s Soup Vans!

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:32:50 -0500

Campbell’s Soup Vans!

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, photo by Lizzie Himmel

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:32:26 -0500

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, photo by Lizzie Himmel

Andy & Jagger

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:31:24 -0500

Andy & Jagger

What Is Pop Art?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:30:02 -0500

What Is Pop Art?

Great advice from Andy Warhol.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:28:16 -0500

Great advice from Andy Warhol.

Warhol

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:28:01 -0500

Warhol

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:27:30 -0500

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:25:46 -0500

Keith Haring - Tree of Life, 1985. Acrylic on canvas

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:25:17 -0500

Keith Haring - Tree of Life, 1985. Acrylic on canvas

Kid Cudi and Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:10:45 -0500

Kid Cudi and Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) the same man? Well maybe not but they sure have a lot in common. Both young artist with different mediums on a pursuit of happiness. I love them both check them out below.

BASQUIAT x KID CUDI Find it amazing how much they look like each...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:56:31 -0500

BASQUIAT x KID CUDI Find it amazing how much they look like each other. Never would’ve realized if it wasn’t for the Ghost video.

"When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important..."

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:35:34 -0500

“When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first was to make the case that hip-hop lyrics-not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC-are poetry if you look at them closely enough. The second was I wanted the book to tell a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history. And the third piece was that I wanted the book to show how hip-hop created a way to take a very specific and powerful experience and turn it into a story that everyone in the world could feel and relate to.””

DE-CODED CLOTHING x JAY-Z x DECODED "GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE "

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:26:37 -0500

One of the shared ideals of the brand was content before commerce along with authenticity…DeCoded clothing

Jay-Z released his first book on November 16th 2010. The book entitled, “Decoded”. Breaks down 36 songs from Hov’s extensive catalog, giving us an intimate account of some of the artist’s most infamous lyrics. The cover features Andy Warhol’s “Rorschach”, which was definitely symbolic and relevant for this drop.

Here’s a snippet from the book:

When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first was to make the case that hip-hop lyrics-not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC-are poetry if you look at them closely enough. The second was I wanted the book to tell a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history. And the third piece was that I wanted the book to show how hip-hop created a way to take a very specific and powerful experience and turn it into a story that everyone in the world could feel and relate to.

The cover features Andy Warhol’s “Rorschach”, which was...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:14:15 -0500

The cover features Andy Warhol’s “Rorschach”, which was definitely symbolic and relevant for this drop.

Jay-Z Compares Himself To A Warhol Painting On “Already Home” ...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:03:48 -0500

Jay-Z Compares Himself To A Warhol Painting On “Already Home” Date: 2009 Lyric: “I’m in the hall already, on the wall already/I’m a work of art, I’m a Warhol already.” It might seem like a stretch for Jay-Z to compare himself to Warhol but consider this: Both Warhol and Jigga were often criticized for embracing consumerism. In fact, in the later part of his career, Warhol became more of an entrepreneur than an artist and was even dubbed a “business artist.” In other words, he wasn’t a businessman, he was a business, man.

BASQUIAT x JAY-Z

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:55:06 -0500

He was hip-hop when hip-hop was still in its cradle: If you look at the video for Blondie’s “Rapture,” the first rap song (using the word rap loosely to play on MTV, you see Basquiat, young, skinny, standing in front of a set of turntables while Debbie Harry struts by. He played Spoonie Gee records at gallery openings.

…his technique…feels like hip-hop in the way it combined different traditions and techniques to create something new. He brought together elements of street art and European old masters. He combined painting and writing. He combined icons from Christianity and Santeria and voodoo. He turned boxers and jazz musicians into kings with golden crowns. And on top of all that mixing and matching he added his own genius, which transformed the work into something completely fresh and original. The paintings don’t just sit on my walls, they move like crazy.

One Basquiat print I own is called Charles the First—it’s about Charlie Parker, the jazz pioneer who died young of a heroin overdose, like Basquiat. In the corner of the painting are the words, MOST ~~YOUNG~~KINGS GET THEIR HEAD CUT OFF….I read it as a statement about what happens when you achieve a certain position. You become a target. People want to take your head, your crown, your title. They want to emasculate you…

…When Basquiat painted Charles the First he was only twenty-two. People always wanted to stick Basquiat in some camp or another, to paste on some label that would be stable and make it easy to treat him like a commodity. But he was elusive. His eye was always on a bigger picture…

One critic said about Basquiat that the boys in his paintings didn’t grow up to be men, they grew up to be corpses, skeletons, and ghosts. Maybe that’s the curse of being young, black, and gifted in America….I’m trying to rewrite the old script, but Basquiat’s painting sits on my wall like a warning.