Guest dose from Oak Tree:
[Responding to discussion of activities at the Point after dose on Avery R Young]
I too remember watching breakers of varying abilities out there in the field house at the Point. Doors propped open, lake air flowing through the room. Extremely powerful positive vibes. As always.
The funeral service for my homie Wyatt Mitchell was held out there. He was a Hyde park hip hop fixture, an mc in the group Stony Island, and was a devastatingly talented graffiti writer under the pen names Attica and Glue among others.
Wyatt was also my upstairs neighbor. He taught me how to play poker in the front stairwell. He was an enormous artistic influence on me, and I still have one of his old sketchbooks I stole from his family’s storage locker in the basement of our building. His pops is a dope jazz drummer, we would hear him practicing after dinner most nights.
This has been your daily 57th street dose.
https://m.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2016/04/15/chicago-underground-rap-pioneers-stony-island-play-a-rare-show-to-celebrate-their-numero-group-reissue
His tale is inspirational and cautionary.
He lived life full huck.
It’s famously tough to track down Stony Island’s material. The obvious choice is probably “slowly on the south side”, particularly with train theme and countless Chicago references, but as a track, it’s a bit too much of a party for me.
The other available track (on YouTube, at least) is “Brickheadz”. This is more my speed. A deeper cut, with a less obvious reference and the kind of spooky haunting atmospheric track that I get into.
Also, the fucking Brickheadz.
Saw them do battle in an NYC bboy competition. They were laying waste to those motherfuckers.
Didn’t you ride out with them to that competition?
Oddly enough, yes. Unforgettable trip. Lavie Raven was there to paint the wall of fame as well. Most impressive graffiti “performance” I will ever witness. Just destroyed his section of the wall with surgical precision, and all in the span of 15 minutes. It was unreal.
Pics available?
Fucking wish. He painted the wall to look like outer space. But not cartoonish, like real space. It was the background, but it was ALSO the fill-in, because he came over the top with one can of white paint and did all the lettering and 3-D in one impossibly fast pass. With no adjustment or correction or refinements or touching up. And then he walked away.
Legend.
It’s like painting a piece backwards. You simply can’t appreciate how difficult and unforgiving that is. No one would even think to try that.
I was dumbstruck. Maybe there’s an image somewhere. Think it was in the Bronx. Maybe late 90s? No, I think it was Harlem. Just found an annual wall of fame thing they do, and that looks like the spot…
From Raven’s Insta: it’s a different wall, but same exact concept. This also features Waka, who was the clear Brickheadz patriarch on that NYC trip. He was the baddest of them all.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCpTvB3JF5a/?igshid=16stveke2co40
My copy of Supertransfer, good all day!
Had not remembered this, but check out who produced Brickheadz…yup, keep his name out ya mouths!