BUSH CAMP

    In the early 90ties I use to take the bus after school to my man tato's crib to watch rap city because we didn't have cable at my crib.  This was  when Prince Dejour , and Joe Clair use to host the show.  There was a solid amount of music videos that would air and among them was "uptown shit" by Kurious.  It was something about the outfits they had on, fly shorties from around the way , the attitude,cipher on a crowded basketball court, tags on the walls, guzzling forties, it was pure b boys of the 90's era for me.  Fast forward to last year while meeting up with other LOlifes before the LOend theory show.  I met a dude by the name of niceLO,  We struck up a conversation about some of my favorite rappers growing up and was blown away when I found out the man I was talking to was a founding member of Constipated Monkeys. So naturally  I had gang of questions to ask him.

what type of individual did it take to be in CM?

You had to be heartless! You had to be able to do what others weren't capable of doing. From fighting, traveling, bombing and down for whatever at all times.  We didn't always walk away from beef untouched.  One time Dev and I were on 178 getting ready to go bombing and we got jumped.  They had the drop, all exits blocked and all that.  We had nowhere to go but bump heads with these dudes, and they were twenty deep.  We got our asses whooped, I was catching blows from all angles and DEV got the worst of it . They wanted him bad.  He was doing it big on the A train., his name was everywhere.  So we didn't win every fight but we gained respect no matter what, you couldn't take that from us.

what could be found on you at any time in those days?

markers, stickers, on a good day a gun. Definitely a knife, I wasn't a fan of a razor or box cutter.   my shit was to slip out the 007 knife.  My moms boyfriend at the time was a marine so he showed me some techniques and how to use it, so I was comfortable with that choice of weapon.


what were some of your favorite spots to bomb?

trains was priority, mail boxes , gates and so on  wasn't a big deal to us in that era.  Because most my damage was done in tunnels my favorite color was aluminum silver from touch tone then red, black than black gloss. I did the basic throw up, straight form block letters. I kept it simple and still covered a lot of ground took up more space in a quick amount of time.  There was a time when all I tagged was a big "N" everybody knew who it was just off the style alone.

what were politics like in the graffiti world in you times?

niggas hate to admit it but CM was the first crew to enforce the rule of the throw up.  Meaning any tag on the wall was fair game to go over with a throw up.  A lot of crews would roll deep when they went out, we would meet up twenty deep and split up into groups of four sometimes three and get busy. this was in the 80s a lot of these so called writers don't see this danger.  you couldn't just walk in any train yard because chances were you was catching an ass whooping,  jumped, stabbed even shot.  When we pulled something out we used it.  If I pulled a gun out you was getting pistol whipped or shot. there was no fair ones, son you fighting family there is no one on one. I was the watch dog, you had to see me about beef with any one in CM . that wasn't even going to the head dude in crew.  Things got so ugly we would flip the name around from criminal minded,  crazy maniacs,  to cookies and milk just to put people at ease.

after all these years do your fingers get itchy?

I'm scheming on tunnels now!  My son is out there too, and is doing it better than me.  Coming up I had good mentors but he has a lot more guidance than I did and I had the best.  Its his birth right, he saw me and his uncles doing it since a baby.  Its a learned behavior that is our way of life, not a fad that was said was not gonna last.

here you can see niceLO's tag in the back of one of biggie's videos

what are the inner workings of Bush Camp?

Mike g (of JUNGLE BROTHERS)  and D.j. Sammy B came up with the name, he was starting his record label . Fae-long and I were airbrushing clothes using our living room as headquarters. Doing airbrush was familiar ground for us because of our years holding a spray can.  I had my job to do and that was promotions.  I didn't know it at the time but my early days as a bomber taught me the skills to execute a gorilla campaign.  Being around graph my whole life in a sense taught me marketing and promotion.   I just had to go to school for learning the lingo of sales and the mechanics of going corporate. 

would you say those survival skills coming up in the yard and

late night missions help mold and prepare you to take Bush Camp to the next step ? 

we already established ourselves in graff, now our raw talent has the corporate world recognizing it.  Our every day fame on the walls and subway trains is now in the main stream.  Only now you cant cross our names out, or go over it.  The days of going to the writers bench or the train station to watch one of trains wearing our names have changed to people rocking us wherever we go.