This is a news story that documented the second Hex vs. Slick battle. It took place behind a Los Angeles Levitz furniture store in 1990. I grew up in Toronto and somehow got my hands on a VHS dub about a year after, shit is legendary!

Whenever I’m in New York my home base is the Lower East Side, so for this next little teaser I chose the iconic Arlene’s Grocery as a backdrop. More importantly though, this clip introduces the one and only Bronx King CES to the LEPOS arcade project. Along with REVOK and GIANT, I’ve got three legendary motherfuckers down with this. BIG shoutout to them. Thank you!

I was doing some online exploring late last night and came across an interesting French blog post that documented “Digital Graffiti”. It focused on arcade games from the late 80′s and early 90′s, but most of the content was from Konami’s 4 player beat-em-up Crime Fighters. As an undercover cop, your mission is to fight your way through the mean streets of New York and rescue a group of kidnapped girls from the cities crime boss. Besides being awesome, the game portrays the grimy Koch-era by covering streets and subways with some pretty hilarious graffiti. Some tags include ROOTS ROCK REGGAE, PUNKS RULE and SLIME BALL RULE OK. The only one that stands out is a green BIO tag on a subway window which I’m sure was more of a happy accident than a shout out to TATS Cru. At the time this game was being made, graffiti was still relatively young and far from accepted commercially. Overseas, the Japanese crew at Konami did the best they could while being completely in the dark about the movement that was coming up.

From the man himself:
“Recently I’ve decided to explore where my graffiti can live within the matrix. I’ve always loved video games and building things so here we are. The future of graffiti for me will be in the form of black hat tactics.
MINECRAFT offers me a way to connect with my untainted inner youth and create expressions of criminal activity without the police punching me in the head or rival graffiti writers shooting at me. During the construction of this “KA” throw-up, I experienced extreme moments of vertigo when accidentally falling off the top of the letters. I have an incredible ability to truly feel the experience within video games which makes me sweat and scream while playing in first person. Also peep the fame tokens.”

Yesterday I found out NEKST passed away, I never met him but always admired his bombing and overall letter style. He wrote MSK, I discovered his work through the stuff he did with Revok. It always sucks to hear this kind of thing, condolences to his friends and fam. Here’s an interview from 2002.