meeting of styles

Way back in my youngers. Before the introduction of art school, (when i could be mildly considered intelligent), 

and guitar music could only be described as 'dry white people shit', Hip Hop was my religion. 

I read The Source like scripture. Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes were my Mary and Joseph. 

I dreamt in Hype Williams technicolor fish eye vision.

Another thing i loved about Hip Hop was graffiti. Being shit at it didn't matter. 

Couldn't climb fences or out run police but stencilling my monkeys made me feel invincible. 

Invincible until i got caught, again. The security guard threatened to report me to my parents this time so
 i cried and begged forgiveness, the mushrooms and Dragon Stout in my system making me extra emotional.

I was let off and to this day never did it again. Interest unsurprisingly wanes after such an embarrasment.

So imagine my surprise at being invited to Meeting Of Styles: an annual celebration of graffiti culture.

I went over with my French bro Antoine, (pictured below), who is really passionate about all this stuff. 

If it wasn't for his enthusiasm i would have left early as i find this purist form of graffiti quite underwhelming.

With the paranoid and often fucked up work created by Steve Lazarides affiliated artists, 

pretty pictures of robots paired with scrawled spaghetti font tags are far too naive for my tastes. 

Nino Paulito