1997, Painting for Company Flow album cover.
Mr. Len, the DJ for the absolute legendary 90’s Hip Hop trio Company flow, asked me the other day if I had a photo or a high res scan of the painting I did for the Funcrusher Plus album that came out for Rawkus Records in 1997. The artwork was intended at the time to be used for the front cover of the forthcoming 12 inch press release, but upon realization, Rawkus had already promised the artist Matt Doo the “cover of Rawkus’ next album release” regardless of who it was. As it turned out, it was the Co- Flow Record. As talented as Matt was (you can see any of his other paintings) I was told he whipped up his cover painting last minute over overnight. I really can’t remember much else, other than being bummed I’d spent a few weeks painting what would be one of my first real paintings on a canvas, if not biggest painting at the time for me. My painting was going to get pushed to the back of the record, I was still hyped as I was a big fan of the crew and the movement at the time overall, I was a die hard hip hop head, and this kind of underground music was cutting edge quality, there was so much incredible music coming out in NYC at this time that was considered “underground” or “unsigned”. About 2 months prior, I had gone downtown to do an in person interview ( old school cassette recorder) of Company Flow for Under Cover Magazine. Unfortunately, my friend and really big supporter of me early on in my graff career, “TDEE” never did publish another issue of his magazine, but during the interview I got the gig of painting the cover of their upcoming album. The music, I was fortunate to get a preview of during my interview at the studio. The studio was downtown around the financial district, a stones throw from ground zero. I showed up in the evening, when all the finance br0s were long gone, I think I walked up a few flights to be met by the fellas, El, Big Jus, and Mr. Len. Another very visual memory of this meeting was an overwhelming Phase 2 mural on a wall inside the studio. A few years later, hanging out with Phase 2, I sneakily brought up the time I interviewed Co-Flow and saw his piece in the studio, he was surprised that I had seen it.
The painting, this was a time before I even knew how to use a computer, so there was no scanning and emailing a file over to Rawkus, I eventually brought the painting to the Broadway office and never saw it again until many years later, seeing it again in person hung inside El’p’s apartment in Brooklyn. Unfortunately this is all I have for documentation of it, and I haven’t spoken directly with El in years.
