Taking Hip Hop Back to the Streets
Hip hop has always been site-specific, but Jay Shells is taking things a step further. The New York-based artist is hitting the streets, taking famous rap lyrics and screwing them on street posts at specific locations all over New York City. “Alot of rappers call out their block,” Shells said in the promotional video below. “When you’re on a corner that’s called out in a song, I think it’s cool to know that.”
The ongoing project, “Rap Quotes”, consists of homemade but very official-looking bright red street signs. For example, you can find Busta Rhymes’ line “Yes, yes y’all, you know we talkin’ it all, see how we bringin the street corner to Carnegie Hall” outside the entrance to — you guessed it — Carnegie Hall. Mos Def’s boast that he’s “Blacker than midnight at Broadway and Myrtle” can now be found at that exact spot under the JMZ line in Brooklyn. Outside the Marcy Houses, a Jay Z lyric reads, “Cough up a lung where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothin’ nice.”
Shell’s big red street signs sport lyrics from New York legends Nas, Mos Def, Big Daddy Kane, Jim Jones, Big Noyd, Kanye, Kool G Rap, Capital Steez, KRS One, GZA, Redman, Guru, Capital Steez, and many others. You can follow Rap Quotes’s progress on Twitter. “It became sort of a scavenger hunt,” Shells said, before adding, “I think people will steal these. Within a week, they’ll be gone.”
Lane Koivu
