As you maybe saw on my website gallery, I love music (I am a vinyl collector not to say junkie and I dj) and love to do music related illustrations. This has been a theme for a long time and this year I started to draw a couple of pieces integrating the logo of one of my favourite hip hop crews : the Hieroglyphics from Oakland.
Before the Pharcyde, Jurassic Five or the Stones Throw artists, the underrated Hieroglyphics crew has been ruling the west coast underground hip hop scene since the early 90's, with members such as Del the Funky Homosapian and Souls of Mischief. Even if you don’t know Del, you already heard him as the main rapper in Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz project which gave him a big mainstream exposure even if a lot of people don't have a clue who was actually rapping. He released a couple of great albums and was also the main rapper in the first science fiction hip hop project : Deltron 3030. He is also Ice Cube cousin but never went the G-Funk route, releasing instead tracks full of clever rhymes, one of a kind flow and voice over complex yet funky beats. He is also a comic books nerd and learnt Japanese just to kill time.
Souls of Mischief didn’t enjoy as much mainstream success as Del but they have been releasing quality albums since their first one back in 1993 (« 93 til infinity »). Contrary to most of 90's artists they even released some of their best releases inthe 2000’s, one with superproducer Prince Paul, « Montezuma’s Revenge » in 2009, with a beautiful cover artwork by artist Steven Lopez (an artwork you can see painted live in this impressive timelapse video). Their last album to date was released in 2014 with production by multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge (« There is only now »)
Not only did the Hieroglyphics crew continuously release great music, they also have an incredible logo, who was actually created by Del himself and which I incorporated in the 2 above illustrations. They even have their own celebration day, the annual Hiero Day whose latest edition was held on September 7th in their hometown of Oakland (no, this is not yet a national holiday but maybe one day :)
