Jax Da Ripper – a classic Frolaboration.
This is the second picture that I did for the “Who’s Jax Art Show” in Atlanta last week. As before, I used a photo of Jax to draw from but this time the photo was provided by the Frolab. For those who don’t know, the Frolab is an umbrella of multimedia and apparel being brought to you by Cognito (The Visionist) and Jewell Green (Miss Frolab). In the late 90′s, Jax was hired by Nito to work at the Fat Beats store in Atlanta. Their friendship extends much deeper than that but, it’s where a lot of Jax’s ambitions excelled.
This is one of the photos that Nito took for Jax’s “Sharper Images“ album. He was initially gonna display it at the art show but decided to Frolaborate with an artist instead. I started to draw the picture exactly as it was taken but, after drawing his face I began to see something different. Without the mirror reflection in the scene I no longer saw Jax looking at himself. It appeared as if he was looking outward… at something you could only see from an elevated position. I knew that I was gonna change the picture but the knife in his hand stayed stuck on my mind. So I started thinking of all kinds of blades… an axe maybe, for Jax the Axe Handler… cuz that was also one of his alias names. But as I referred back to the photo, I saw two blades and turned them into swords.
In my opinion, there’s no other figure with a warrior’s spirit like the samurai’s. They didn’t use guns, they fought to the death and prided themselves in protecting their people. In so many ways Jax also embodied those same methods of living. So I kept the Japanese theme throughout… and the letters in the flag are Japanese for “the ripper”. On the Sharper Images album Jax has a song called “Jax Da Ripper”, in which is his remake of the LL Cool J song entitled “Jack The Ripper”. In this joint he pays homage to all of the lyricists from Queens, who helped to pave the way for him to have a chance in music. This is a quote from one of the four & a half verses he went-in on: “I’ma slow it up, my flow is tough, chop B.S. promoters up / Cash for the verbal slash, Jax is gonna blow it up!”
Jax photo taken by C.Nito for Frolab.
The word is... aint no one dying over spilled ink!
SICK WITH IT FAM!!!!!!
Many thanks to you my homie! We gotta keep lettin’ people know the histories behind our work when we can. It’s very much like you said before, we may have the skills but the ideas behind them don’t come to us right on the spot. Let’s keep pushing each other fam!
Word up. I was thinking about this and decided to come with less pages in my art book so I can breakdown the history of some of the artwork i’ve done. People know that we do art but we got to show the critical mind process of these creations. It’s time to Think, Show and Prove
Now you’re talking my dude, adding that thought process to your art in a book, is really gonna help folks understand your creations. Excellent upgrade my man, just you releasing the book alone will make us step our games up.
Yeah, yeah you know it kid. Love this joint and it’s ill how it morphed! Much respect as always braddah. FANGGGGGGG!!!
Flux, you’s da man! If me, you and Goldi were Wu-Tang in this game, he’d be The Rza, I’d be the Gza and you’d be the O.D.B. kid!!
That’s dope, I like getting a breakdoown of what the artist is thinking. Thanks for the process!
huggeeee fan of your art bro! Love it! truly inspiration stuff