‘It was a balanced life I could not face, since I am a very unbalanced person who needs action. This city was too small. Paris is now too small. I sometimes feel this world is too small.’
His art has developed into some of the most amazing stencils around and can be seen in many cities around the world: Delhi, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Brooklyn, LA, Dakar, Casablanca, London, Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Warsaw, Berlin. ‘I think my art is painting stencils in the streets. I could do other things, but what I am good at is stencilling the streets. I’m used to painting anywhere I am and I am travelling quite a lot. I try to place paintings in the streets, but almost without asking for any authorization. Trying to place the right stuff, at the right place, at the right moment.’
What does street culture mean to you?
‘A lot of things, and not only hip hop culture. As a Frenchman, we think to the firemen dancing parties of the 20s, the Parisian terraces, the political posters, having fun between kids in parks, putting tags by night in the streets, being rebuked from night clubs, smoking a cigarette outside a club, smoking a joint in a small street. But more seriously I also think to homeless people, street kids and beggars, since those experience streets continually, with its violence, its indifference. These suffer from streets and cannot be avoided.’
What/who are your influences?
‘Ernest Pignon-Ernest, the original pioneer of French street art, is certainly at the basis of most of my works. But older classics are big references for me: Dürer, Rubens, Delacroix, Ingres, Géricault, Courbet and many others, I am even influenced by French poets like Baudelaire, Apollinaire and Rimbaud.’
The City Loves You is a Mexican art and culture crew who get their messages about urban art, fashion, movies and events out there, through a web-based magazine. Operating out of Mexico City since 2006, TCLY was primarily created as a platform where artists from Mexico could show their work to the world, and ever since they have been invited to collaborate with a lot of different companies and represent a lot of artists in Mexico City. They also create events and parties based on the themes they usually talk about on their website and they are the best reference point for anyone who wants to find out what’s really happening in the lives of Mexican youth, from the street to art to nightlife to leisure life and beyond. I caught up with Cesar Ortega, founder and director of The City Loves You.
‘We started TCLY as an urban artists’ and fashion designers’ community, the idea first was to give an account to all the emerging artists so they could show their work on a website. Obviously they were never able to update the blog so I started inviting friends who were fans of the scene and were interested in having this as a hobby, and since this was a good idea it grew a lot in the world and it started to be a job for everyone because it was considered as a one of a kind piece on the internet’
‘I grew up in a barrio in the north of Mexico City called La Industrial, well known for being a half wild barrio and also because it’s a very inspiring hood. Actually there are a lot of famous creators who also were raised there. Then I moved to another place which was more like a wealthy place full of Spanish people and Nuevos Ricos. I didn’t quite like it but I started skateboarding there, and there was the place where the local skate shop called Time Skateshop made a park for us where I basically used to spend all the time skating with neighbors and friends from around.’
‘The street is the perfect medium for us to communicate in different and simple ways, like the clothes you wear, the music you represent with it or the sport you practice, or any other way to express peacefully and impact the others to continue the process of freedom and love between each other on the planet. We have a lot of musical influences, we’re really eclectic: we go from punk to hip hop and many genres more, it doesn’t matter, but we’ve been also influenced a lot by all the people who started growing the scene in Mexico, the people who believed in the underground culture in all of its different forms.’
I love it: street culture Mexican style. This is what the culture is all about, taking something global and giving it a local twist! Big up The City Loves You!!
First off, let’s get this straight: Cohen@Mushon are three guys — two MCs and one DJ. The trio, Michael Cohen, Michael Moshonov and Itai Drai, are some of the most humble and likable guys I’ve ever met and when we spend some time together I discover the boys have an infectious sense of joy about them, a rare thing indeed in the rap game. They are like the Beastie Boys used to be when they were young and restless. Cohen@Mushon are from Tel Aviv. They rap in Hebrew and use old-school Israeli music samples mixed with the fattest beats. This may sound like something that won’t cross-over, but I can assure you that their music has a global appeal. A serious global appeal.
‘First of all everything started as a joke. We met when we were sixteen-years-old and we started to do this routine every Friday and record a song — it was like our hangout — it grew and grew and when Itai (our DJ) came to the event we really became a band. We stated having like bigger and better shows and we started connecting to the scene. We used to have shows for our high-school friends but after we hooked up with Itai we got more serious and then at one of those shows we met Ori Shochat who is like the fourth member of the group. He’s a pioneering hip hop producer/DJ in Israel. He saw us and we started working on our album at his studio. That’s when we got serious, we kinda picked the material and we said, okay, we’re making a real album. Ori gave us a home to do everything and record for free and he really believed in the project and we were off on the journey.’
So Cohen makes the beats, then Cohen and Mushon write the lyrics together, and then Itai, AKA Walter, digs in his crates and finds some vintage Israeli sample to scratch in. The song that put them on the map contained a sample from an old-school Israeli track from the 70s, to which Walter added something from an Israeli cartoon to bring out the humour. What is also interesting is that even though they rap in Hebrew, the music works overseas as the message is universal.
‘We rap only in Hebrew because we feel that hip hop is all about your own language and talking on a personal level so that the only way to say something truthful is in your mother tongue. So it was only natural for us to sing in Hebrew even though most of the stuff we listen to is in English, but we wanted to make it our own. How it happened was very simple. Michael did the beats on Fruityloops (easy-to-use music software — and by the way we still work on it!) and he used to send me beats and I said to him, “You should be the MC also,” and he said, “No, you should be the MC and I will be the producer.” I said, “No, you have great things to say!” and so we started writing together. Our first concept for a song was “I have lost my physical fitness”. It was about us being unable to run or do anything sports related. It was very important for us to put some humour in our music, because when we started out, Israeli hip hop really took itself seriously, and was very political, very heavy headed. We needed to add some of that humour we had from our heroes — Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, The Beastie Boys — to bring back an element of fun to it. But that’s not to say that we don’t take it seriously. We don’t do it as a joke. We take our fun seriously.’