I’m impressed by your musical taste.

I appreciate that man. These two things (comics and hiphop) are coming together more and more. Pure hiphop is already an art form anyway and it was just bound to happen where you gonna get these two genres coming together. Like I said next year I’ll have that book coming out, there’s a couple animations coming out, and I’m working on some other concepts that will really push the hiphop thing more and not just reference it or touch on it a little bit. I love the Proud Family because they show all of the blaxploitation things in there like the pink Cadillac and they are getting away with it. Even the jokes they play on Magic Johnson, with him not being able to say words right, that stuff is hilarious and they are getting away with that on Disney. I want to take that same kind of mentality and push the hiphop side of things and people will love it, but they won’t get it. Cats like us will get it because its raw and its real, but other people will be like oh that’s a cute show.

I saw you did some cover work for Non Phixon.

Yea Eclipse is a good buddy of mine. I’m doing another joint for him called Battle Beats. I’m doing these two mechs like Gundam and their gonna be battling. I gotta get that done for them by the end of the year. I’ve known him for probably ten years now.

Gundam is ill.

That whole genre with the cats from Japan they are so into hiphop it’s ridiculous. There’s a new toy line they are working on right now called Deviant and its ants that look like mechs and hiphop mixed in. Man its crazy, they have mechanical arms and Gundam like armor and then they’ll have a style where it looks like a graffiti artist did it.

Have you ever tried your hand at emceeing?

Nah.

No Djing?

On the producer side I always wanted to get into that. I always imagined myself as a Pete Rock kinda guy [who] makes real dope beats and cats just respect you. I never really got into because I was so busy on the art side it was hard to do anything besides drawing.

Who influences you the most when you are drawing your characters because I know it can get tedious. What do you normally listen to?

At certain times I listen to alternative rock if I’m doing something real crazy. It depends on the mood but most of the time it’s hiphop stuff. I listen to Jay Dilla late at night. I pop in “Welcome to Detroit” and I’m just going crazy. I put on “Petestrumentals.” Those two I just wear a hole in those cds. Everything else is a lot of underground stuff.

Have you ever thought about a character and tried to build off of an image of a rapper like I want this dude to look like Pharaoh Monche with a flamethrower on his arm?

With this hiphop book there is gonna be a lot of that in there. I’ll be referencing a lot of hiphop characters in there, I hope I don’t get sued. I’m gonna have dudes in there but they won’t be noticeable. They’ll be in the background or something. It won’t be any major cats where they can come after me or anything like that. Comic illustrators do it all the time. In a lot of books you see them put in Marvel characters, but throw in [a DC character]. Spiderman might be swinging through the city, but they’ll have a dude dressed up as Batman in the street. It’s two different universes and two different companies but they can get away with it as long as they change the character up a little bit. I would like to do something like [making a character look like Pharaoh Monche] but I’d like it to be more legitimate. I can’t go an just put it in the comic and make it all noticeable like that’s Pharaoh Monche. Subtleties and backgrounds though I can do.

Do comic book designers get groupies?

It’s no where near 50 Cent or nothing like that, but it’s one of those things [that you run into] if you go to a con or show. I’ve had that happen where a girl came up to me and gave me a big hug, like I love your work and I saw your stuff on the site and it is so dope. If you go to my website you’ll see comments on the tag board giving all kinds of compliments. I wouldn’t call guys groupies, but you got guys that will be like your stuff is hot and you inspired me and got me going doing my stuff like this. You got those kind of people too who aren’t groupies, but they are really influenced by your work and they just follow you.

Last question, if you had a choice to make a hero out of either Al Sharpton or Michael Jackson, which one would you pick and what super capabilities would you give them?

It’s gotta be Mike man, he think he a super hero already. His ability would be to live forever. You can’t kill him he’s a vampire. He’ll roam through the earth forever.

He’s already allergic to the sun.

That was pretty easy right there.

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Posted by Halftime on Monday, December 15th, 2003 and is filed under SLICK TALKIN'.