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WildStyle!!! (part 1) By Deadly Buda “All ancient systems, however, hold one idea in common: writing is divine, inherently holy, with powers to teach the highest mysteries; writing is the speech of the gods, the ideal form of beauty. The Egyptians were taught by Toth, the scribe of the gods, and named thescript “The divine”; Jehovah engraved the letters with his finger when he gave the commandments to the Hebrews; the Assyrian god Nebo revealed the nature of cuneiform to his people; Cagjie, the four-eyed dragon-faced wizard, modeled the Chinese characters after the movements of the stars, the footprints of birds, and other patterns that occurred in nature; and in India the supreme god Brahma himself gave knowledge of letters to men.” John Stevens-Sacred Calligraphy of the East(c)1981 Shambhala publications Many of you are probably familiar with the term “WildStyle” in relation to Hip-Hop culture and especially related to graffiti art. The very complex, adorned with arrows, doodads, and generally incomprehensible Byzantine interlocking letter schemes is the common interpretation of WildStyle. Yet this is not the full story by any stretch of the imagination. WildStyle encompasses more than only the visual arts and has a colorful past that should be known to any serious scholar of underground history. Furthermore, no discussion of Wild Style can truly be complete without mentioning Tracy 168, a lot. |
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The very complex, adorned with arrows, doodads, and generally incomprehensible Byzantine interlocking letter schemes is the common interpretation of WildStyle. Yet this is not the full story by any stretch of the imagination.
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Simply put, Tracy 168 was WildStyle, is Wild Style, and started WildStyle. Wild Style as per Tracy 168’s definition is: Wild Style (r)*is what you do in your life. Whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability. If you’re not the best, then find your purpose and be the best atthat. If you’re an artist, postal carrier, plumber or salesman, just be the best. Wild Style was originally a graffiti crew in the early 70’s that Tracy started. It grew to be the biggest crew in New York City at the time. If people kept records of such things, WildStyle would probably hold the record as the graffiti crew with more members than any other in the history of graffiti. I can’t say whether the crew came first or the mantra above, but one thing I know is that the crew came before the labeling of complex graffiti styles- “WildStyle”. In the mid-to-late 70’s, complex styles were often called mechanical letters, and were pioneered by a number of writers - most notably Phase 2 and Tracy 168, plus many members of WildStyle. The Wild Style crew just happened to be the crew with more writers doing the complex style, so people just started calling the complex styles “WildStyle”, in reference to the close association. My first contact with Wild Style came about from meeting the infamous and famous, T-Kid. I was hanging out in the Mecca of graffiti - New York City, for a week in the winter of ‘84-85. At the time, there was no bigger writer in the city than T-Kid, and the crew he was down with, T.A.T. (“Tough Ass Team”, in fact, to this day T-Kid and T.A.T. are super strong names in graff, and definitely some of the all-time kings of style). Naturally, I was pretty psyched to meet T, and was even more psyched when he handed me a red “Wild Style” card. He added that there was another card, “the Black card” that you could only get from Tracy 168. The cards meant that, basically, the crew liked your style, and invited you to write W.S. or Wild Style with your pieces. This was a big honor because every-one who knew graffiti knew of the fabled history of Tracy 168 and WildStyle. Tracy was one of the original “old school” style masters in the company of all-time luminaries like Phase 2 and legendaries like Stay High 149, This was a guy that put a lot of “style” into the styles we knew in the mid-eighties! Anyway, T-Kid was Tracy 168’s number one protégé. So much so, that even though the “T” in T-Kid was supposed to stand for “terrible”, most people thought it stood for “Tracy”, like, “Tracy’s kid” (which, if mentioned in his presence, would invariably provoke him(T-Kid) to beat the slop out of whoever said this). After this, I spent the rest of the winter and spring of that year diligently trying to perfect my own original style to be able to hang with the then developing worldwide graffiti scene. I stumbled upon a way to make regular lettering styles with internal designs and color patterns look cool with 3-dimensions while going in different directions, with a large emphasis on giving the illusion of organic movement. I nick-named this style “Monster-Rock,” after an obscure Electro record that Bobby Orlando did (My first big Monster-Rock piece appears in “Spray-Can Art” by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff it has since been adopted now by many writers, and I must say, has been taken miles of steps further than my original designs). It was a big step forward in the graffiti world, and I now had some style that could “passably” hang with the kings. I was looking for-ward to that summer, when I would return to NYC. I would stay that summer at Henry Chalfant’s old studio at 64 Grand St. right between Soho and Chinatown. Henry’s studio was the main meeting place for all the writers in the city to check out his photo collection and pieces and to generally just hang out and wait for the gossip to pour in from all over the world. He was working on a piece book that would become “Spray Can Art” at the time, and so every writer in the world, practically, was calling his studio to tell him about a piece they just did, so that he could get flicks. One of these people happened to be Tracy 168. He had just done a handball court wall in the Bronx and called Henry to get a picture before the wall got painted over. Henry asked me if I wanted to tag along, and of course I said yes at the prospect of meeting the original Wild Style king! The next day we drive up to the Bronx and meet Tracy. We got along pretty instantly, which with Tracy isn’t that hard, because besides being a great writer, he has a welldeserved reputation of being one of the funniest, most energetic people you’ll ever meet. Tracy asks Henry and myself if we could help him tear the plywood off the wall, after Henry gets flicks. So, we proceed to tear the handball court off the wall and pitch it down the river. I think it was agreed on that it was better to dismantle the piece itself, rather than let some slob from the city park division paint over it with whitewash. So here I was, helping Tracy throw one of his pieces down the river. We agreed to meet up later that night to possibly paint and Tracy would show me some styles in his sketchbook. That night I took the 6 train up to something like 3000th St. in the Bronx, I mean, it was way up there, anyway, I get to Tracy’s place and he asks me if I want to paint, excited I said “yes”. He proceeds to hand me a paint-brush and a can of white paint and convinces me it’s a good idea to start with his bathroom, and after I do that he will show me some styles. Fair enough I thought, and he even put on Red Alert’s Friday night KISS-FM megamix on the radio! Boy! I thought I was in fucking graffiti heaven... Meanwhile, Tracy is laughing with his girlfriend about how he just got some kid to paint his toilet. After I slopped paint all over Tracy’s washroom, he then busted out some styles, and I must say, I was not disappointed, showing me some new letters and various cool techniques. We arrange to meet the next day so I can hang out with more of the Wild Style crew, like Nomad, his main protégé at the time. This day has been alternately called “That Day” or more commonly, “Oh my God, THATDAY”. I had that year been quite obsessed with Carlos Casteneda books, shamanism and reports on the psychedelic experience in reference to alternate states of reality. At the time, mescaline and Angel Dust was popular among graffiti writers, and I asked Tracy if he could get some mescaline. “Mesc” came in the form of small purple “Tiny-Tart” shaped candies nick named “Double-Barrel Purples”. Unbeknownst to myself at the time, street mesc was definitely not the same stuff Casteneda had written about, meeting spirit animals and all... street mesc pretty much clouded your retina so that everything was tinted purple, and you could not stop laughing hysterically. Eventually, laugh lines would burn themselves into your face after six hours of wearing a Cheshire Cat grin, and your stomach muscles got worked like you would not believe just from doubling over in laughter. This discrepancy would have all been fine had it not been for the mysterious entrance of “Joe Tobacco”. Up to this day I am quite convinced that Joe Tobacco (quite possibly a code-name) was a hippie-C.I.A. operative planted in our lives for that very moment. Early 50’s, 5’7”, glasses, graybeard and moustache, rather reminiscent of Groucho Marx in his later years, and wearing a Yankees cap, Joe Tobacco was the connection for the mesc. But that was not all! In fact, he said if we wanted to trip, he had some good acid we might be into. He fronted it to Tracy to try out, and myself, Tracy, Nomad, his older brother, Dasez (also from Pittsburgh at the time), who had joined me on the trip to NYC, and some guy who somehow just started walking around with us for no particular reason except he kept talking about Kung-Fu, meandered over to “Nomad’s Mom’s House”. While our mysterious Kung Fu master regaled us with thrilling stories of his various kung-fu exploits, Tracy went about examining the acid. A circle, with three black triangles was the design on every hit of the blotter. Joe Tobacco, as I recall, had made some off-hand comment about it being “stronger than quadriple window-pane”, which just didn’t seem to register as being a particular important statement at the time. I can only guess, in retrospect, that Tracy assumed the blotter was bogus, primarily because of the “weak design” on the blotter. Alas, history will never benefit from the insight, because he has probably forgotten. So he figured that if they were to do anything, he would have to take 4, Nomad and his brother took 4 each, and since I was a beginner, 2, chasing the mesc. The Kung -Fu master, and Dasez, luckily, abstained. So a half-hour goes by and nothing is happening. I’m thinking I’m never going to get a spirit animal, never going to enter a separate reality, and destined to stay solidly planted in this material reality. This can be highly disappointing for your average 15-year-old. Tracy, chortling whilst deriding the tabs’fakeness, laughingly takes 2 more. I dejectedly shuffle to the kitchen for a glass of water, when I notice a Camaro parked outside the kitchen window. A fairly normal Camaro outside of the fact that it’s roof is breathing, pulsating, and making a sort of electric-boogaloo style wave in between breaths. I noticed the glass of water I was holding was now as big as my head and so I navigated my way back to the living room. “I think some-thing’s happening!” I happily exclaimed, trying not to notice how big Kung-Fu Lou’s nose was getting, and wondering what the hell he put in his hair to make it shine like that. The room got somber as everyone tried to remember how many blotter tabs they had ingested, rubbed, laughingly gave pets, etc. “The acid is real... that acid was real...jeezus...what was I thinking...” pitter pattered through heads in the room. Tracy, Nomad, and his brother had all done acid before. After the initial shock of realizing they had just taken copious amounts of incredibly strong acid sunk in, they happily accepted the reality that was to come. Dasez was stoned on pot beyond belief, as was everyone else, save our resident Bruce Lee, who had to keep his body and spirit “clean”. I was going from extremely happy to genuinely terrified quite quickly. I really had no idea what acid did at that point, and immediately struck up an alliance with “The Masterof Kung-Fu”, as he was the only one not vacantly looking with his head half-cocked at Nomad’s-mom’s-house’s living room ceiling, when I vainly scanned the room for safety and re-assurance. Tracy springs up! “Gotta go outside!!!” “KKNNEEGGGRR...SHRIGGGR...KKN-NINNINNT...” (it’s one of those laughs that sounds like it is re-distributing lots of mucus somewhere in the skull), ricochets through the room at as languid a pace a ricocheting anything can travel. “OH SHIT!” Nomad pushes himself with his arms from the chair he was seemingly painted on moments, no hours, well, who knows...? “What the fuck is happening? Fuck...” is my ongoing internal echo. Dasez’s eyes are as big as saucers. He leans over, “Are you okay? “I’m really feeling weird man... “but, can you go?” “Oh yeah,” I remember, Mr. Kung Fu knows kung fu, he can protect me! “The grandmaster” gives me a look of utter self-confidence; “I was in the Olympics. ”Looking back at this event, the insanity of it all really strikes me. Here is a 15 year-old kid from the boon-docks of Pittsburgh, Pa. taking his first acid trip, on quite possibly, one of the strongest blotters to get mailed throughout the 1980’s, in the Bronx. Some people get forests and happy, spinning DeadHeads at Rainbow Gatherings; I get the Bronx River Projects. If nothing else, the Fates in my life have had, at least, a sense of humor. Tracy takes command of all our destinations-not that he knew exactly what was going to be in store, or even where to go, or who he was, or what year it was at that point... But after all, isn’t it this amazing trait that truly makes a great leader? Tracy will take us on a “Tour of the Bronx.” Was this intentional? Or did he get claustrophobic and just start walking? Ahhhh yes, one could never know with a master... As we leave “Nomad’s Mom’s House” the night has kicked in, and the Yellow bricked tenement buildings start to resemble cobble-stoned olde English villages, or have I been staring at an “Olde English 800” empty 40oz. Bottle lying on the edge of the sidewalk for to long? There are still trees in this more northern section of the Bronx... come to think of it, there are still buildings...I think we are heading to the subway at this point - indeed we are. I am trying my hardest to look normal, because I am sure everyone is staring at me, I whisper to Dasez, “Is this ever going to end? I’m fucking freaking out man!” Dasez giggles and tells me to shut up and be quiet. A completely mixed signal...I am confused. Gritting my teeth, I look at the long midnight faces of the 6 line. Their jowls distended in an obvious condemnation of my very existence. Meanwhile, Nomad’s brother is I think, making fun of me with Tracy, a bit like a skinny, Puerto Rican Speedy Gonzales and Ron Jeremy verbally ganging up on you, or are they? I turn to Nomad, who is, sort of, I guess, radiating with a faint angelic glow, “don’t worry man, I’ve done this six times, it’s fun, the first times kinda rough”. At least that’s what I think he said. I tried to reply, but it came out like I had a bunch of marbles in my mouth. “-guh-huuhhh!-” Actually, they seem to be making fun of our shimmering track suited friend! The Kung Fu Master! Tracy mentions “Kung Fu Lou” and everyone laughs, Kung Fu Lou laughs and scowls at the same time, flexing his totally theoretical muscles from underneath his shiny turquoise Adidas tracksuit (are people on the train staring at us?). “Dude, I was in the Olympics”. Do they have Kung Fu in the Olympics? Oh well, I’m too concerned with my overall, never-ending, insanity-destined, mental collapse. Just then I get a glimmer of it! Apassing train! With scrawls and tags dancing all over it’s otherwise shiny white exterior (a White Elephant car! I actually didn’t make this up while I was tripping; writers really used to call newly painted white cars “White Elephants”). I probably would’ve ragged on the car any other time, being it was just tags and throw-ups, but now it had a certain brilliant energy... Before I can process this thought, we arrive in the South Bronx. Time to get off the train -just as I was getting comfortable, I might add. Tracy, Nomad, and the ineffable “Nomad’s Brother” decide that it would be a good idea to get candy and snacks. After a group conference amongst the “At least 4 tabbers” they decide that I, being the most introverted and mentally damaged of the lot, would probably be cheered up too by some candy. So, for “history’s sake” Tracy decides to walk us toward the Bronx River Project. It being one of the famous homes of Hip-Hop, and there was a decent handball court wall there also that was probably pieced. Of course, we have to get candy first. So mostly everyone races off to the Candy store while I try to re-distribute myself down the steps of the subway platform-Dasez helping me out - drafted actually- since he was the only one of us that was black, and the only one with any credibility to dissuade someone from just randomly kicking the shit out of me while I tried to figure out where the hell I was. At this point, I am losing most motor control, but somehow, ‘Rome (Dasez’s other nickname) steers me to the candy store. This candy store was literally a hole in the wall. Made into an official store with a boarded-up wooden door over the hole. Inside was a huge mother-fuckin’ German shepherd on a chain, or was it? I make some buzzing sounds “brzzzzeppp-oh fuck”. |
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The meaning of graffiti struck me on a very spiritual level, in that these were from real people, saying something, ecstatic in their communication, and that communication would live on outside of them.
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“I think Buda wants some licorice,” chimes in Dasez. A big fat black guy with a shotgun gives Tracy an odd look. “Oh, heh-heh, he’s okay! Belts Tracy, as if he had to think about it a second, then follows it with a rollicking laugh to emphasize just how okay I really was. Man with shotgun nods, “Hmmmmm...” I guess we can buy candy here after all. We leave with armfuls of candy and soda pop, and god knows what else. I am temporarily placated by sucking a long strand of red licorice, oblivious to all around me. We make our way to the Bronx River Project, the official “home of hip-hop” made legendary by Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation, not only to “just see it”, but also see the wall, and luckily, the train was nearby. We wander through Bronx River; I gaze at the non-descript tenement buildings, remarkably calm. It’s probably 6 in the morning. As we fix our gaze on a handball court piece, little kids on the higher tenement floors are throwing eggs down at us. Ambling through the bombardment, completely unaware (none of us knew this until Dasez told us later, as he and Kung Fu Lou were the only ones sober enough to notice at this point). We check the wall. It’s okay, decent piece, nice can control... I guess we were out of range of the pre-schoolers when we were at the wall, because we stood around for a while. That is when it happened. It was the shining moment! Perhaps shining is not the word... intense, life-changing, perhaps. A moment when your path in life is just wrenched from under you and re - directed... In the distance, the elevated subway train rumbled. The most intense head-fuck portion of the acid trip was concluding. Snaking towards the platform, flowing out of a purple and orange horizon, glistening and emblazoned with graffiti from start to end, the train, like Mercury bringing the messages of the gods, rolled past my dilated pupils. It was not the best graffiti, as I recall it was like a half-done, Duster-Lizzie whole-car, a string of PJ throw-ups,* but mostly crazy throw-ups and tags. The point, I think, in retrospect, and what spoke to me was, that it existed. It was as if the letters were jumping and dancing off the sides of the cars, their organic energy sizzling in front of the sunrise. It was as if the letters were living creatures birthed from the people that wrote them. The meaning of graffiti struck me on a very spiritual level, in that these were from real people, saying something, ecstatic in their communication, and that communication would live on outside of them. For whatever reason made them do it, whether we would classify it good or bad, it sprang, in whatever distorted way, from their soul. I realized that nothing could really stop the expression, that no matter how hard the MTA or the City of New York, or any authoritarian body tried to clamp down, the soul would speak! Therein lied graffiti’s energy, power, majesty, and for some, threat. It is as if this moment had been burned into my mind and I have been trying to explain it clumsily ever since. In fact, it was not until this article and this stage of my life where I could put it in any sort of perspective whatsoever. Now this is what I saw. I know everyone had a similar moment along this trip, maybe not necessarily at the same time or the same stimulus but there was an intense feeling of the power of creativity and communication that permeated the experience. Next, we were off to the train, to get back uptown. Now, no real writer ever would pay to ride the subway. So everyone hurdled over the turnstile, whereas I, still fried to the gills and devastated by the aforementioned revelation, kinda lurched one leg after another, much like a confused sloth, over the turnstile, examining every aspect of the process. The booth attendant depressingly stared on with a sigh, watching me lope over what could not have been an obstacle to an arthritic turtle. Once at the top of the platform, Tracy realized that we had in fact, got on the wrong platform and we were heading downtown rather than uptown. Because we had jumped the turnstiles in the first place, we couldn’t just go back down and go on the other side. In hindsight we probably could. But I think there were an infinite number of paranoid scenarios and consequences parading through Tracy’s mind at that point. He thus concluded that the safest option was to cross the tracks in front of all the morning rush-hour commuters. My first words in hours were “th-th-third rail.” What I was referring to so uneloquently was - that the third rail on the New York City Subway track is charged with 500 volts, and you can easily walk on top of it, as there is aboard USUALLY above it. But, so much as touch the side and you’re a goner. I was having trouble walking already! Still the world’s dimensions were in a constant state of flux, bending and growing whenever they damn well pleased! For instance, one moment the roach on the ground was tiny and cute, next minute it was a formidable massive killing machine. The tracks were big, the tracks were small, the people were nice, and the people were devils. On and on with this emotionally generated flux of physical and emotional dimensions... “I can’t...” Thus, Dasez and Nomad, each took a side of me and, as the entire rush hour crowd watched on and Nomad’s Brother and Tracy rolled in hysteria on the ground from the other side of the platform, gently lowered me on the tracks, and moved me across four sets of tracks as I kept looking down, sweating maniacally looking side to side, blubbering, “Oh shit! Shit!, Oh shit! Shit! oh shit...” and on and on, while they told me repeatedly you’re okay man, c’mon, calm down, and on and on. Finally, once I had been propped up on the other platform, my fear that I would be forever trapped in “Stronger-than-quadripple-windowpane-acid-world” started to subside. We were finally returning to that gentle Utopian world of the past - “Nomad’s Mom’s House”. Once we got to our destination station, we walked down the steps, and I looked back at the train platform. Bolted on every train platform was usually a huge billboard, usually with a cigarette advertisement. In this case, it was a “Virginia Slims” billboard with their famous “you’ve come a long way baby” ad campaign. For those too young to remember this ad campaign, “Virginia Slims” were marketed with the idea that young professional women smoked these cigarettes, or girls and women that wanted to be. The insinuation was that women had worked so hard to be on equal footing with men, that now they could finally smoke in public also. “The you’ve come a long way, baby” was usually accompanied by a dated black and white photograph with a humorous picture of a woman sneaking a smoke, next to a grinning “professional”, skinny looking model dressed in a suit or suit-dress ensemble holding a smoke. “You’ve come along way, baby”, indeed. Well, someone had really worked this billboard, one of the teeth was blacked out with black spray paint, and a big black eye ring was painted around one eye, along with a few other crude ‘improvements” to the original. “You’ve come a long way baby” next to the face. Well, I just doubled over with laughter at that point; this 100% summed up my feelings on the past several hours. It was at this point where my acid/mescaline trip went from terrifying to terrific. As if all my confusion and paranoia was transformed into crystal-clear clarity and focus. Thus, the rest of the trip was a lot of fun. It was decided that we were in no condition to make an appearance at “Nomad’s Mom’s House”, and figured we were best off hanging for awhile at White Castle. On the way, Tracy and myself applied for a job at Wendy’s, much to the manager’s amusement. Kung Fu Lou left in a huff after he was accused of wanting to sleep with me, we all tried out using a jack hammer, thanks to a street worke rkind enough to let us try out heavy machinery in our condition. We finally drifted to White Castle, where we made fun of people going to work. I was the butt of on going humor, because despite being completely horrified, I was laughing so much that night, laugh lines had burned themselves into my face, making me somewhat resemble the puppet from “Magic” (a horror film out at the time about a demonic ventriloquist dummy). After a couple hours of this it was finally time for Dasez and I to take the long subway ride back to Manhattan. |