Kid Acne – The Birth of Hip Hop mural

Kid Acne has just completed this incredible mural up in Sheffield which was commissioned by the Festival of the Mind. What’s interesting about this image is that it’s around 15 years old and was originally going to be the cover for DJ Vadim‘s side project The Isolationist when it was still called ‘Orators of Advanced Thought’.

Back in the late 90’s I was doing the artwork for Jazz Fudge, Vadim’s label and was introduced to Edna (Kid Acne) with a view to him contributing to some of the releases. Ed was finishing his college course at the time but painted a version of this as part of the final show I think (could be wrong here) and sent photos down to be scanned.
I can’t remember why they weren’t used but I still have roughs of it in the archive. What a great image and exciting way to end a terrace of houses, we’re seeing more and more murals like this springing up these days in the UK and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

Photos by Shaun Bloodworth (portrait) and Andy Brown (Yo! action shot) courtesy of Kid Acne. Check the video of the making below too.

THE BIRTH OF HIP-HOP / UNIVERSE RAP from Tom Sykes on Vimeo.

Posted in Art. |

2 thoughts on “Kid Acne – The Birth of Hip Hop mural

  1. I had a low-res thumbnail of that image tiled on my desktop back in ’97ish – grabbed it from the Jazz Fudge website I think.

    So happy to see it find a new home!

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