Rakim drawing by Askem
Rakim, during an interview with CityLab, compared my passion for hip hop architecture and using hip hop lyrics as modernism's post occupancy evaluation, to the lyrical dexterity of the hip hop MC! Check out the full article here: The Universal Hip Hop Museum and Design Justice
Read MoreArchitect Frank Gehry was in Oviedo to collect the Prince of Asturias prize. Photograph: J l Cereijido/EPA
In this world we are living in, 98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that’s it. - Frank Ghery
Read More"...you know, this one [Le]Corbusier lamp was like, my greatest inspiration. I lived in Paris in this loft space and recorded in my living room, and it just had the worst acoustics possible, but also the songs had to be super simple, because if you turned up some complicated sound and a track with too much bass, it’s not going to work in that space. This is earlier this year. I would go to museums and just like, the Louvre would have a furniture exhibit, and I visited it like, five times, even privately. And I would go see actual Corbusier homes in real life and just talk about, you know, why did they design it? They did like, the biggest glass panes that had ever been done. Like I say, I’m a minimalist in a rapper’s body. It’s cool to bring all those vibes and then eventually come back to Rick [Rubin], because I would always think about Def Jam." - Kanye West
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Photo: Maya Robinson and Photo by Getty
Quest Love's thought proving series examining How Hip Hop Has Failed Black America written for Vulture, make us hip hoppas think critically about the gravitas nature of our culture. Although Quest questions the legitimacy of hip hop architecture, I am happy to know that he is aware of the architectural investigation. I would love to discuss with him, how the hip hop generation is incorporating our culture into the architectural profession.
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Photo: George Stroud/Getty Images
Pablo Picasso's famous quote is the epitome of his "innovative" career. During my "Hip Hop Inspired Architecture" Exhibit at the 2014 American Institute of Architects National Convention in Chicago, I revealed some of Picasso's greatest acts of thievery. The most notorious of them all is his personally unacknowledged "Black Period", a time in which Picasso was deeply entrenched in African Art, resulting in his supposed creation of Cubism as we know it today.
Listen to Mr. West speak the truth about life in general and about his aspirations to practice architecture. I have to met him one day...who is gonna help make that happen?! I need to start a social campaign "Kanye, met Mike 2014". I have blogged and written so much about Kanye that sometimes I think I know him. Its crazy, he is a very critical thinking and an inspiring person.
Read More“I probably sound ignorant when I talk about [architecture]… I’m fine with sounding ignorant… I’m not talking about something like music that I’m a complete expert at. I’m talking about something I want to learn about and I’m not afraid to talk in public about my desire to learn more.”
Picasso's introduction to the hip hop community during many of Jay Z's lyrics and most notably, his song, "Picasso Baby" is just the latest node in the constant cyclical nature of black artistry merged with mainstream art movements. . Nadeen Pennisi of Palm Beech State College identifies the specific inspirations for Picasso's first work of Cubism, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, as copper covered reliquary figures from the Bakota (a.k.a. Kota) people of African state of Gabon and masks from the Dan people from the Ivory Coast. If not for Picasso's introduction to African Art, would Cubism exist?
Read More"Like Van Gogh found a catalyst in Japanese art, Picasso came under the spell of African art and used its primitive power to shake off his classicist mannerism that offered no possibilities to innovate."
Read MoreCheck out the work of Marc Da Cunha Lopes, titled "Graffiti Girls".
Marc brings the implied third dimension of graffiti to reality in this series of photographs.
- Pablo Picasso
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KRS One - Image courtesy of Digitaljournal.com
“It seems that hip hop’s only real challenge, even problem, is that it lacks an awareness of itself. This is the ultimate state of hip hop at the present moment. It doesn’t know that it is what it is. For when we collectively realize that we are hip hop and that hip hop is beyond entertainment, then this subject and many other hip hop preservation subjects will become obvious and we shall birth a new nation!”
KRS One - The Hip Hop Declaration of Peace