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hiladelphia is famous for its unique hand styles, with a history in graffiti at least as rich and developed as New York city. ENEM is a style master and one of the best known graffiti writers to have come out of the city, here is what he had to say. ------------------------------------------------------------- How and when did you get into graffiti? Well look I’m about 38 years old, so when I was about 12/13 years of age, I knew a couple of my friends were into graffiti, they were pretty much novice, they weren’t really big on it, but I did learn from them to pay attention to what was on walls, what was on trains, what was at subways. I discovered that my city was a big city, and we had a huge transit system, and by riding the public transit system, I was able to really learn to read all of the graffiti around me, recognise that there were different people from different areas, that they were in crews. I kinda self taught myself, just that jump off point just to kinda get into it and then I started to try to write, learn how to
make my own style, the other kids in my area that were doing the same thing, and kids outside of the area that we would hang out with. Philli graffiti is a big thing, its the subculture, its very generational, its been around for 30-40 years, some people would even dispute longer, and talk about writers in the 50’s. I personally know that it’s generational, and that when my friends and I would go out we would study the guys before us, so we had this bond because we all knew about the other writers and we would discus what they have done and trade pictures, we were really enthralled by graffiti. - You would say that the generations before you were vital to forming you, how you saw graffiti and your style? Absolutely, I firmly believe that most people are products of their environment, so being brought up in a metropolitan city like Philadelphia I was able to really able to understand the aesthetics. I would see it and I would receive it. It was something that I realised that a lot of people didn’t understand, that a lot of people didn’t pay attention to. And that in itself made it unique, made it different. If you were really able to get involved, to me it was the sign of intelligence, you were down with that esoteric society. If you were able to go out there and visually accept what you were seeing, and then process it to a point where you understood it, you know, for instance let me give you an example, there may have been a writer ERKS, a friend of mine, he is a classic Philadelphia writer, his style is master, you can always tell when he wrote something, didn’t even matter if it was his name, because you understood his hand. You could see the way his style was so unique, that if he wrote DRASTIC or he wrote BLID, you could just see the little touch in the way he would write his name. and that in itself told me that everybody had a take on it, everybody understood, and then put their own special uniqueness into it. I like the idea that as a subculture its a group of people but everyone is individual, their whole reputation is based on their individuality. - To be a writer, you have to bomb, would you agree with this? Absolutely you have to bomb, you have to experience it to understand it as well. there is no way you can be a deep sea diver if you don’t swim, there is no way that you can be mathematician if you don’t know numbers, to me its just a part of the process, if you are not out there, and you are not understanding. I want to be honest, there’s a huge thrill in what we do. Its so gratifying, you have to kinda go out there and do it. When I started it wasn’t so much necessarily for the pictures, it was for your own personal growth, when I started writing we didn’t have cell phones we had beepers, we didn’t have the internet, we had mail. We would send each other letters, and we correspond over pictures and negatives and send them to each other. This was a subculture that was alive, and very much functional even though it wasn’t meant to exist. So if you’re not out there bombing, you’re not connecting with the other writers in the community, therefore you’re not a writer. There are different levels to bombing too, there are different ways to participate, some people feel as though, you don’t go the hardcore route, your not out with a rebellious attitude to your graffiti and your not out vandalising then your not a graffiti writer. But I know writers that lets not say they do legals or anything like that that, they may do something that is illegal, but its not an issue, they don’t do something legal they do some-
thing illegal, the issue is whether or not they are burning hard. I think at some point you have a recognise, that if your not out there, you’re not experiencing, and when you’re out there experiencing you feel alive, you know graffiti’s a great thing because when you see your name, its like I was there, its a statement to society that I exist, I’m alive. I think that’s what we get out of it. - Philadelphia seems to have such a strong affiliation with tagging and its own unique styles, how did this come about and what are the styles? Well look, what I would say is when it comes to Philadelphia graffiti, it has a rich heritage of tagging. And the reason why I believe that is, is in the forefront of graffiti in the pioneering days when New York city was just starting off, and small cities around the country were paying attention and following, and I’m talking about the subculture not really the people, the people involved in graffiti, Philadelphia started off tagging. And we had forestreet styles, non stops, we had top to bottoms, we had wickets, all of these different variations of tagging are unique to us, simply because instead of going the route of bubble letters to straight letters to pieces to wild styles to productions, we went from tags to tall prints, to wickets and throw ups and stuff that was really big in the street. What that did was it separated us from New York city, and they just built and built on it because it was the real street society, the crews and the people that were pioneering this, they were constantly working together so to speak. They were out, they were bombing together, they were collaborating together, they were building styles, building mentally. Philadelphia is really big on building mentally, these cats will get their black books and show each other different style wickets, they evolve those wickets, change those wickets, and we all come up with little things that separated us. For instance I could do smilie face with a cigarette coming out the mouth, or you know my buddy ERKS he might do one with big giant smilie face, he’ll draw teeth in it, with a star in it, and that will look like a shine. Everyone has their own take on it, even though we got it from the people before us. So when I say its generational, I figure writers come out they bomb, and then younger writers come out see what their doing and they try and build on it. So that’s what they’ve been doing for years, and they we’re not concerned with piecing as much. Now we piece, don’t get us wrong but we’ve only done it as far as, I don’t want to say handfuls but I’d say a smaller population of our graffiti community thought that was a priority. Most of the writers here really still feel as though it is important to uphold that tradition because they know it stands out. The thought process behind the Philly tag is not one that stopped and started and everyone just did that, its one that started and that generation built on and then the next generation built on so on and so forth. Because every day you have writers that are coming out that haven’t written in 1015 they’re showing the young writers how to write the Philly, they’re going out and they’re they’re bombing the routes in the city right now. A good example of that is RESINE, he’s in a crew called ATP, All Through Philly, I’m in that crew and that’s my president. He has come out and kinda showed the whole city, the anti graffiti network that the Philadelphia police cannot stop the thought of graffiti, they cannot take away what’s in your mind, they cannot take away the skills that you’ve acquired. You can always go out and express yourself. We are very well versed in dealing with the police en route, we know how they’ve been, we know how to play their game. Most of the
writers here have duel personality in the fact they have a street name and they have a graffiti name, cats in my neighbourhood might call me by street name, but my graffiti friends know me as ENEM. - What would you say is the best experience you’ve had through graffiti? OK I think the best thing I’ve received was getting to meet a particular person who I’ve always thought was an incredible artist, an incredible person, somebody who just understood graffiti for what exactly what it was, and that is a friend of mine, Mike Dream. I actually am very glad as a graffiti writer to have had the experience of being his friend, being in his crew and writing with him. I don’t look at graffiti like I got this or I got that, you know I ran an art gallery for years I made money off of this but really one of the things that stands out in my mind, Mike had passed away, Mikes no longer with us, and DREAM was a phenomenal artist, phenomenal. one of the greatest graffiti writers that ever lived on the west coast. And I was very lucky to meet him when I was a young man, when I was young graffiti writer. And he was so open to what I was about, that me and him walked routes and he, he said let me find out how you do this Philadelphia painting. He would go out with me around 3 o’clock and we would walk bus stops from end to end and he would write his heart out, he wanted to a Philly hand style so bad he would tear that wall up. And I saw the passion in him that I saw in myself, but he was so much more advanced than me so I felt like I had somebody as a mentor somebody who I could talk to who understood how I felt and I could look up to and say I want to do what you do. He didn’t know me from a can of paint but he brought me in, seriously he brought me in like a little brother and he has a brother so don’t get it twisted, his heart was that big, he was a great guy and a lot of times I think about the experience I had with him. Some of the writers I met with him, some of the MC’s, digital underground, this guy was famous, this guy was famous as a graffiti writer, and I could not imagine giving up graffiti at that point. He was the sole inspiration to me to continue on writing and to enjoy what I was doing. I do think sometimes I say to myself I’m really glad I was involved in graffiti and I was able to meet somebody like that, somebody who was so genuine and authentic and understood exactly what I was about, even though he lived 3000 miles away from me, and when I went to move out there, I met him, I didn’t know him before then, I met him when I was out there in a train yard. He said who are you I was like I write so and so, cocky little kid I do this I do that I’m the greatest, and he said ‘I’m dream’, and I look around and everything in the yard is a dream piece. You know I felt like the kid in the candy store, I got the greatest graffiti friend ever, ever. Dream was a legend, it was beyond that he was my friend. so I have to say an experience that I wouldn’t give up, it would be the experience of being Mike Dream’s friend. - Motivation wise what if anything has changed since you started? It has for me, for a long time I was put off the internet, I hate to say the internet has been a big downer for me and graffiti. It’s a plus because the transfer of information is great but the misuse of that information I think is not useful. I think the idea of exploitation of graffiti is fine, people want to market it, that’s a great thing, I think they should do it, but do it responsibly. I’ve read countless articles and countless layouts of people who misrepresented themselves and maybe even let somebody else
do that. But when its all said and done the history of graffiti will become polluted because you have six stories for one thing, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, somebody says he was the first to do this and somebody says he was the first and you ask them what year and it gets convoluted. It’s all pretty much peoples own egos talking about what they have done and people take that as history. - Give us a good chase story... Well I’d said this story probably ain’t nothing good but it just recently happened this year...a few of my friends were out and we were bombing, coming through Philadelphia, we were drinking, at a bar, on dollar draughts and that ain’t expensive you know so we were drinking up a storm. 6 or 7 of us were out, all of these guys were real big Philadelphia graffiti writers. So anyway I had been tagging and a police officer pulled up behind me and he saw me backed up, and I took off, I started running and he threw his car in drive and another police started coming and I tried to take him into some alley ways. The problem is I had just had surgery in my foot so I had pins in my foot, and I was going to run to an alley which I had known previously in the past that I could get through to this scrap yard, and I would hide there. That was my plan. Well that alleyway now had a 12ft fence on it and I couldn’t climb it so what I had to do was double back, but when I was coming back the police officer drove into the yard and the car was bouncing and I damned near jumped over the hood but I ran around him and I heard him go ‘FUCK!’ and so I kept moving and then the other police officer pulls up and he sees me and he starts to ride along with me and he’s in the car and I can’t run any faster and I realise I’m not going to get away from these guys, so I stopped in the middle of a street, I’m on a major street called 5th street, I stopped and put my hands up. They pulled up and they kind of wedged into a v thing one one side and one on the other. They said get on the ground so I get on the ground, they punched me in the head, started kicking me in my throat started kicking me in my chest, beating me up, and they’re asking me ‘where’s the gun, where’s the gun’ and I said I don’t got no gun. And they’re like ‘you mother fucker’ and the one police officer takes his gun out and puts it to the side of my head and starts twisting it in my temple and said ‘you stupid mother fucker’ and I said ‘are you going to blow my head off right out here on 5th street?’. and for the first time in my life I said, this is probably the only thing that’s ever changed for me as a graffiti writer, I had the forethought of a man and I said ‘I got child, man.’ They charged me with evading and some other shit, criminal mischief you know the graffiti itself all that other stuff, and that kinda fucked me up, I decided that’s the last time I’m going to get chased, I don’t think I’m going to go there no more. Now on the up note I had that case when the court of the commonwealth wasn’t ready to prosecute and the judge threw it out. I got a couple of other stories but to me that’s the one that stands out, because that just happened, that was my very last chase, and I actually want that to be known, that was my last chase. - Any shout outs? Absolutely – ATP All through Philly, All Time Pimps, WAB We Ain’t Bullshit, We Always Bombing, and KTS. I wanna send a shout out to the newest crew I’m involved in now, I love them, they are international, they are positive, and
they are group of the dopest writers that I ever wanna be around, that would be FLY ID, and I cannot forget Bold Art, RIP to Mike Dream the legend and hip hop connoisseur. Just want everyone to know I’m still doing it, I seen cats like SEEN and them dudes, they been painting forever, they got grey hair and they still rocking it hard. I’m down with that, its a lifestyle, I think we should all live our lives and graff, it’s in the mind and in the heart, even if its not on the wall.