![]() ![]() Eklips, Coax, Senate (Path) were the names I kept seeing, so one day I was painting with my homie Tell at Motor Yard in West LA and I met Eklips and mentioned to him that I was seeing him up a lot and he told me he was going to Culver High, and he had recently started AWR, which stood for All Writes Reserved. It was late ’88/early ‘89 when I first started seeing AWR tags on the 405 and 10 freeways, and pieces appearing at various yards. I always had a camera with me and I took thousands of photos over the years because that was the only way to capture a piece because the majority of the time they got buffed or dissed within a day or two.Ĭan you tell us a little bit about how AWR/MSK came about and what role you played in the crew’s inception? Remember, this was way before the internet and even before color graff mags so the mystery surrounding graffiti back then was vast and the players in the game were few. Think crappy, high-pressure paint, stock caps if you didn’t have Testors (basically NY thins), and you had to work it out and move fast so everything wouldn’t run and because the spot was illegal. Watching them paint was my intro to the whole piecing process-not that I was rocking burners the next day, trust me, it took a long time to get good back then. Around this time, I remember my neighbor, Edit (RIP) from WCA (West Coast Artists) pieced his street address on his parents’ garage door and it was a burner with technical fill ins, so my intrigue to paint continued to grow until one day I accidentally stumbled across the Pico/Sepulveda yard, which was torn down in the early ‘90s, and saw a bunch of dudes painting burners-Dream, Risk, Rival, Flame, and a few others. These guys were insane-Skeme, Lee, Zephyr, Seen, Dondi, and Erni to name a few. Then I found Subway Art and I was floored. I think it was called Hip Hop or something to that effect, but I remember there were sketches from Phase2 from New York that were insanely technical that blew my mind. I remember I found a book at the library. Not having a clue how to do an actual piece with paint, I sketched letters on paper for a couple years. ![]() ![]() Neighborhood alleys, Venice Beach, downtown…as the scene developed in LA, guys in my school were breaking and emceeing, but graff was what did it for me. I first saw graffiti in 1985 pop up in a few places around LA when I was in junior high and I was immediately hooked. I’ve been painting graffiti for close to 30 years. I was born in 1973 and I grew up in West LA. What first drew you to graffiti and how many years have you been writing? of this culture, while building a life outside of graffiti and being a loyal family man. We dig deep with the veteran about what it means to be an O.G. He takes a second to talk with us about paying dues, coming up in Los Angeles and graffiti writing in full blown adulthood. As one of the original members of the AWR/MSK families, Fuse has witnessed firsthand what it takes to climb to the top of graffiti culture. ![]()
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