I apologise in advance for the roller coaster, which is this post. The reoccurring theme through this series has been how geographical isolation has played so intrinsically into the shaping of popular culture in New Zealand society – in particular our Hip Hop music and our graffiti style. Our determination to feel a sense of international ‘inclusion’ has been both a gift and a curse in many ways.
Thanks to Peter McClennan for digging out this image – I was searching for it for so long!
When I travel abroad, especially within the United States, it still startles me how many people assume New Zealand is part of Australia. Generally the conversation goes:
“This is Askew from New Zealand.”
“Oh you’re from New Zealand?”
“Yeah.”
”Oh man, I’ve always wanted to go out there to Australia.”
To which I usually reply:
“Well, if you do go to Australia, make the time to fly the extra 3-4 hours to my country – it’s worth it!”
Australians and Kiwis are all well aware of our differences – we are so much the same in so many ways that we have made a point of highlighting these things. I was thinking about a really simple and relevant way to illustrate these differences in character and this is what I came up with: When comparing Australia and New Zealand’s forays into Hip Hop music I think you get a really good sense of the traits of each country. Making some blanket generalisations here – a typical Australian track tends to be very ‘Australian-centric’, definitely quite irreverent and maybe even to the detriment of its appeal to overseas listeners. A New Zealand track tends to assimilate itself to an international or American standard – maybe it’s even hard for outside listeners to determine exactly where it’s from. Of course the danger of generalisations is there is always an exception to the rule but for the sake of illustrating this point – this works quite well in this case.
Like everything though, there are reasons and there are cycles within popular train of thought at any time. Right at the beginning of my ventures into Hip Hop and doing graffiti – I was lucky enough to witness the emergence of a very talented and influential group of local artists that really epitomised a staunchly ‘kiwi style’. Of course, they weren’t the very first to do that – there was the important and hugely iconic group ‘Upper Hutt Posse’ and their track ‘E Tu’ from 1988. In all honesty though, the groups that had the most impact on me were those that were most prolific around the time I started High School. Musically I’m referring to Dam Native (Which Bennet Pomana from Upper Hutt Posse was a member) and Urban Disturbance and graffiti wise I speak of DLT, Opto, Daniel Tippet, DAF crew and Tank WL.
Dam Native – Behold My Kool Style
Performing on a Red Bull Live Sessions – May 2008. Check the Oli Green lyric in there “Kicking up a storm like an 8-legged Van Damm”
My memory may not be 100 percent accurate with some dates but I’m pretty certain around early 1993 the posted up top first went up in Bungalow Bill’s shop window – in the form of a giant black and white poster that took up nearly the entire frame. It may be hard to fathom anything more local – more Maori than Upper Hutt Posse but this single image of Danny Haimona aka Hyper D from Dam Native just screamed at me at such an immense volume. I would go as far as saying that Danny was easily one of the most iconic and influential local artists of that era – in all regards, ranging from his swagger and sense of style, the manner in which he made music with the perfect balance of Maori attitude yet not in a way that put it in the realm of being easily pigeon-holed as just ‘cultural music’. He made straight up and down Hip Hop music with raw attitude and he influenced a whole generation of Maori youth that didn’t necessarily feel that their voice had validity within the genre. To me, Danny represented empowerment that stood the test of time. He could flip effortlessly between Te Reo and English, spoke in local terms and in real Maori slang with a natural accent. If I had to write a list of the most important names in NZ Hip Hop music history – he would undoubtedly stand near the top and I’m pretty confident few would contest that fact. For a good decade you could travel to the most rural places and hear people rapping in a style derivative of his – drawing on his ‘Ism’s’, like the title he coined to describe his style: Horified.
The first actual recording I heard of Danny wasn’t until a bit later – I think around 1994 when I managed to get my hands on the rough demo version of ‘Urban Disturbances’ 37 Degrees Latitude album from Oli Green’s younger brother Guy (He wasn’t supposed to have it and definitely wasn’t supposed to give copies to us but yeah, that’s what kids do!). I used to mop the floors at the Ponsonby Community Centre after school and I had the demo on repeat on my Walkman. The track was called ‘Relay’ and from the intro:
“Kia Ora Kotau – This D-A-M-N-A-T-I-V-E – The original Horified Hip Hop – About to ahh – Get wicked with UD…”
To the line:
“How do I know? Because I’m Maori to the bone bro.”
I may not be doing a good job conveying how awesome it was to me but as a die hard fan of Rap music – even a try-hard rapper myself it just felt powerful to hear such local voices. (Also check Hamish from Christchurch’s Beats And Pieces on the 3rd verse – killer)
From Ice TV 1995.
Urban Disturbance had started out as ‘Leaders Of Style’ and the group consisted of Oli Green, Zane Lowe and Rob Salmon. I remember seeing them for the first time on the TV3 show Yahoo around late 1992 and being really captivated. I think the reason they resonated with me was they were both really good and also because they were white boys. I hate to say it that way but it just made me feel like ‘Hey! I could do this!’. Not long after that they made the name change to Urban Disturbance and with that came their conscious decision to rep a very natural kiwi accent. Much like Dam Native, the way they did that was with a real sense of balance between what sounded good and international yet infused with plenty of local slang and references. Between UD and Dam Native, being Kiwi seemed so cool to me right then.
As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, one of my closest friends at High School was Guy Davey-Heap who is Oli from Urban Disturbances younger brother. Guy was a popular kid at school, good at basketball, fashionable and had a way with the girls. A lot of our knowledge of music was drip fed from Oli – through Guy and to us. My entire music collection for the first two years of high school were literally cassette dubs of Oli’s CD’s – which Guy was well aware of as an important commodity. Guy was a hustler at heart and knew how to stall out on the key tapes in exchange for lunches from the tuck shop or maybe an item of clothing, a cap or pair of shoes. Of course, I never had much to offer fashion wise so I usually won him over with my enthusiasm for the music and our kindred ambition to be rappers ourselves.
From the point that I became a semi-regular fixture at Guys house, I started to come in contact with Oli on occasion. It’s funny to reflect back on that because I was so completely in awe of him and his friends – almost to the point where they were just so amazingly cool in my eyes. I think it’s a thing you do when you’re young and in my case, I was the oldest of my siblings, mainly raised by my mother and desperately lacking older male role models. I was so conscious of trying to be cool whenever Oli and his friends were about, I was cautious about what I said – any slight nervous slip would result in getting paid out some how. Usually though, my deliberate and awkward manner around them would always result in me saying something dumb – and then getting given flack.
These situations were likely the most forgettable of things for Oli but to me, any hint of info was like gold. I really formed most of my opinions about fashion, style, swagger etc from a combination of what I was told directly or what I would eavesdrop and hear. There were a few occasions where Oli actually lined us up and would literally school us on what was what. Where to get the best T-Shirts or where the best barbers were and even how to rock our jeans. Really funny stuff in hindsight but at the time this advice was heavy.
Something that Oli did – a lifestyle decision he most likely never stuck with but at the time it was something I viewed as really courageous – was when he went completely drug and alcohol free. Amongst my group of friends, the culture we had around our use of substances was really strong, the idea of giving that up was far-fetched to us in the least. I just remember being really impressed by that, I honestly felt that was the most righteous thing anyone I knew did. Drugs and alcohol represented a sense of rebellion to us but then because of him it seemed like being drug free was even more rebellious in some crazy way.
By the end of High school I was definitely at a cross roads as far as my personal direction in life. To add to that, many of my friends were really drug and alcohol affected – to the point where some were fighting for their sanity. I don’t want to mention specific names, the people that know – know but some of my closest friends were really battling and hardly resembling their old selves. It’s the hardest thing when you feel so conflicted between being a good loyal friend to someone and also seeing how their own behaviours are isolating them more and more from everyone around them. Over time the old crowd really drifted apart.
In 1996 I had a string of incidents that really changed me completely – I was thrown down three short flights of stairs at a gathering one night, dragged up a driveway and beaten really severely. I had two much older guys kicking my head from either side. I woke up looking like the Elephant Man, my head was swollen out like Frankenstein’s Monster. I walked around with a big chip on my shoulder for months on end. It was really a combination of bruised pride and fear. I started to act out my aggressions whenever I was drunk – one night I came very close to hurting someone very badly and it served as the first of many wake up calls. Once again, it’s not something I can talk the specifics of but it was honestly such an ugly incident that I’m not proud of.
The conflict that existed within me was I was not particularly tough, not an aspiring gangsta like kids I knew, I feel I was well-raised and from a happy home environment. My interests were art, music, performance – not really pursuits synonymous with the type of negative behaviours I was starting to develop.
The last time I drank alcohol was in January 1997. It was the morning after a night actually worthy of it’s own novel. I woke up covered in piss, shit, blood and dirt with around $400 in loose money in my right pocket. My friends had found me lying in mud on Williamson Ave in Grey Lynn at 5am, crying with an empty 40. The day after was filled with reports of my out of control behaviour, random sightings around the city – some so embarrassing I honestly just wanted to die.
I swore from that day that I would never drink again. Of course it was a really powerful decision to make – one that also proved very isolating and lonely at times. It’s completely irrelevant to me wether Oli stuck with his non-drinking but the fact that someone that I admired and looked up to a lot did that proved enough inspiration for me to do the same – and over time, this choice has genuinely been one of the most defining decisions of my life. What being substance free represents to me is the clarity and focus I’ve needed to push forward with my creative pursuits. It showed me for the first time that I was a person that could make bold choices and stick with them. I don’t like to preach to people about what they should and shouldn’t do but for me this could have been the single most pivotal and empowering choice of my lifetime. One that really helped me find my identity.
Life is full of defining moments. I’m talking about those key turning points and situations that seem insignificant at the time yet in hindsight those events can often mark the most significant changes in your direction. Here’s a really corny analogy but sometimes I feel like a ball on a pool table. I feel like my collisions with the other people in life are similar to when a game of pool is played – those interactions can send you ricocheting off in a seemingly random direction. This post more or less sets the landscape for my graffiti and Hip-Hop world in Auckland city as I was coming up. A lot of characters are well known now but at this time we were all little punk-ass kids finding our way.
A selection of albums we were listening to in 1993. Not all of them were released that year but this is essentially my life’s soundtrack in my early teens.
1993 was one of the most pivotal years of my life when I look back on it. As I mentioned in the last post it was my first year of High School and I attended Western Springs College in central Auckland. It was there that I met a lot of people who really helped me refine my tastes in music and art. The school itself always held a reputation for celebrating creativity and so my mother felt it was the natural choice of the secondary schools in walking distance. During that time, there was no strict school zoning as such and so Western Springs had students from a wide range of neighbourhoods, which varied from lower, working and middle class areas through to reasonably affluent parts of town. The school population was made of people from Western Springs, Pt Chev, Mt Albert, Kingsland, Morningside, Sandringham, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, St Marys Bay, Herne Bay, Freemans Bay, Westmere, Avondale, Waterview, New Lynn, Glen Eden, Devonport, Takapuna… The list goes on. Aucklander’s will appreciate how crazy a mix that is.
Aside from Bonus and Bart, there were many other taggers and people at Springs that would come to emerge as personalities within the Auckland graffiti and Hip-Hop scenes. Risk (DFH, MCF) was two years ahead of me and was already famous amongst our peers for his versatility in tagging styles and his fearless approach to skating. He seemed impervious to pain – one of his party tricks involved bottling himself repeatedly without even flinching. Ironically, he is now a glass artist. I recently saw an article on him where he was quoted as saying: “I used to be famous for breaking it not making it!” which I thought was brilliant. Early in my 3rd Form year, Risk and Bart invited me to skip school with them and chill in the park for the afternoon, smoking weed and tagging in vivid all over an over grown flax bush. Perhaps it was the smoke – actually I know it wasn’t but I just sat there in awe of their ability to pull out tag after tag – each different to the last. They did them linked, backwards, upside down… They made it look so effortless – like it was breathing to them. Actually, a fair number of the Auckland KOA kids went to my school. From memory there was Erupt (also a class mate from Kowhai Intermediate), Rapid, Junkie, Varns, Kurupt and Avias. A few of those guys made my first two years at school pretty hard but eventually became good friends during 4th and 5th form.
Gasp RFC was a year older than me and in my form class. He had been writing Rocket the year before that, mainly with a kid from my area called Dylan -he wrote Sneak. Dylan played a rather major role in motivating me to actually get out tagging – I mean properly, as in at night with real spray paint. I came up with a few names that year – my first name I tagged about was Scribbles, sometimes shortened to Scribs. I even played with the name Scribe (imagine that!). The reason I absolutely had to have a name with ‘S’s’ in it was because of the yin-yang S’s that were current at that time – popularised mainly by the crew ‘Ebony Society’. Our early tags were mostly around school, down at the spacies at the Morningside shops or along the tracks at the local train station. Eventually I moved on from those names and tagged Twice and then Meth (totally bitten from Method Man… Shame!). That was until sometime towards the end of 1994 or early 1995 when I finally settled on the name Askew. I got that name from a Freestyle Fellowship lyric in the song Park Bench People. I chose to stick with it immediately loving the symmetry that was possible with that letter combination.
Chilling with Dylan. I don’t know why we each have a pair of headphones on. I also can’t begin to tell you how much my mothers fluro green, purple and pink paint job on my bedroom walls tormented me!
Those that know me well will tell you that my first element was MC-ing. Ever since 1990 when I was in standard 4, I had been trying to make music. I started out making 4 bar tape loops from the beginning of my favourite rap songs and writing verses to those. I then acquired my Stepfathers rather basic drum machine and started sequencing beats on that. I also learnt piano since I was Eight years old and used to practise on a Synthesizer. It had a sequencer on it and so what I did was make my bass lines and general melodies on that. The main concern though was that the drum sounds were unauthentic and I knew it, so I would manually synch the drum machine and synthesizer (which took work!) and then rap over the top of those in my bedroom. To encourage me my Stepfather set up a simple PA in my room with a microphone to practise with, even though they had to deal with the annoying ruckus that ensued. I often tried to rope all my neighbourhood friends into rapping with me, going as far as to write all their verses for them. No one had the same enthusiasm for making music as me and so it became a solitary pursuit… That was until I started High School and I found a tight bunch of friends with a kindred love of Hip-Hop.
Within the first few months at WSC, I met Danny England and Guy Davey-Heap. For starters, they were infinitely more knowledgeable about Hip-Hop than I was and it showed. These kids were ahead of their time in regards to how they dressed, what they listened to and the way the conducted themselves. They were from Ponsonby and Grey Lynn and had attended Ponsonby Intermediate prior to Springs. There was certainly a lot of sizing each other up before we struck up a friendship and because of my naïve and generally scruffy way of dressing I know I was being judged. These guys wore flash sneakers and Workshop jeans, fitted hats and starter jackets. They always rocked backpacks and listened to walkmans with big Sony headphones. I wore a pair of imitation name brand sneakers or Chuck Taylors that were falling to pieces. My jeans were my Stepdad’s, I borrowed them because they were baggy and so I thought they looked cool, even though they were probably stonewashed and tapered.
We started talking because we all had a love of the Hip-Hop Music but it has to be said that they had far more discerning tastes than I did. For example, I would listen to everything from Public Enemy to Mc Hammer and everything in between regardless of whether it was commercial or otherwise. Rap was Rap to me and I was by no means a snob about it. They were elitist’s, they listened to groups like EPMD, Gangstarr, Pharcyde, Black Moon, A Tribe Called Quest, Leaders Of The New School… They knew their shit. I soon Learnt that Guy’s older brother was Oli Green from Urban Disturbance (early 90′s Hip-Hop group consisting of Oli Green, Zane Lowe and Rob Salmon) and a lot of the influences and tastes were trickling down from him to my crowd. (This is a whole other post so stay tuned).
Through Danny and Guy I met one of my very good friends Vents RTR, who was also much into all the same music and Fashion. He was two years ahead of us but had grown up with Guy, so he would often give us the time of day. Eventually we all became a very tight knit crew and our focus shifted quickly from just socialising to making music. This was the start of our infamous ciphers at the Ponsonby Community Centre. Danny’s mum ran the place and on the weekends she would allow us to use the facilities, sometimes we would literally camp out there from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Between Danny and Dylan we had a complete DJ set up consisting of one Technics 1200 turntable and one miscellaneous belt driven turntable off a home stereo system plus a very basic mixer. I had the PA and a microphone and that was all we needed, the platform was set. We used to drink terrible cheap alcohol like Gimlets Vodka and Lime, Screwdriver and Bahamas ’62 and rap for hours. Occasionally we would be blessed with a visit from some of the older guys, for example I remember Che Fu during the Supergroove days rapping the verses that eventually became immortalised on DLT‘s track ‘Chains’. It’s almost surreal to fathom that when I look back now – considering how iconic an artist he is. Oli Green came to one cipher and drilled us about how to ‘really freestyle’ and told us we needed to bring something more honest with our subject matter and delivery. That is advice that could benefit many local artists still today.
Usually most nights ended when we were literally too messy to even talk, let alone deliver a coherent verse. Perhaps Danny and Dylan would have an argument about who was the DJ for the group and Dylan would storm out with his portion of the equipment. Either way, some times we would walk back to Kingsland and Morningside and drop some straights along the way, likely in Spraykote ‘Azure Blue’ or some ‘Dazzle’ – That’s what graffiti was to me then. It wasn’t structured or overly ambitious, it was just part of our chosen ‘lifestyle’.
I have to credit a small handful of people for really changing my outlook on graffiti around that time. Firstly, my friend Vinnie who wrote ‘Duck’ and another friend Liam who wrote D.Dare (after comic character Dan Dare) but eventually he changed it to Skare. They were the first people to show me ‘Subway Art’ and my first friends that started really drawing pieces with any real vigour. About this time Cripes (MCF) started attending our school – and he was another one with a very natural style and a lot more understanding of what graffiti was supposed to look like. About this time we actually consciously started thinking about doing pieces and wondering where and how to acquire enough paint to do so. About the same time, Webs was coming to a similar conclusion and he did a few basic bits and pieces around. This in turn motivated me to find some paint and do something slightly more elaborate than a tag – I did a filled in scroll with tags inside it and drop shadow. It could possibly have been the wackest thing ever painted in spray paint. Through Webs I met a kid named Shawn, who had spent some time at school in New York. He was interested in the same music as us and also dabbled a bit with graffiti. He introduced us to his friend who would eventually become known as Ikon RTR. From that point, literally everything changed.
Within the Auckland Hip-Hop scene there was a major shift in influence in the early 90’s. The New York attitude and aesthetic influenced by Beat Street and Style Wars faded like a passing fad. The Boom boxes disappeared, the cardboard was put in the trash, the adidas stirrup pants were retired (Thankfully) and the focus shifted from East Coast USA to the West, specifically Los Angeles.
Photos pillaged from the internet except the first one which I shot in 2006.
It’s arguable that the movie ‘Colors’ was to adolescents and teens my age group what the aforementioned movies were to the youth of the 1980’s. In 1984 after ‘Style Wars’ screened on TV One, there were literally kids spraying and B-Boying the following day. After ‘Colors’ came to VHS here in New Zealand, it seemed there were ‘Crips and Bloods’ overnight. Some gang names I remember were MSC (Morningside Crips), TCG (Tongan Crip Gang), SOS (Sons Of Samoa), OHB (honestly can’t remember what that stood for!) and GBK (Ghetto Born Kings). It seems almost funny to say them now because they certainly don’t strike terror in my heart like they did back in those days. Writing this post has been an interesting process because it has forced me to dig a little deeper and delve into the origin of these types of gangs in Auckland and how that shaped the environment I came up in.
For the most part, it was undeniable that there was plenty of imitation at it’s worst. It seemed people chose their allegiances purely by which colour they preferred. Of course, it wasn’t all that simple and plenty of other factors contributed – some can be traced back to historic racial divides, geographical, cultural and religious factors and of course New Zealand’s rife gang history.
In New Zealand we love to pull out the old ‘Highest Per Capita’ quite frequently. Usually it’s something like ‘the highest STD rate per capita’ or ‘the highest youth suicide rate per capita’ or ‘highest teen pregnancy per capita’. It almost never relates to something positive like ‘greatest amount of geniuses’ for example. Perhaps this all just comes with being such a small nation but apparently we boast the highest number of gangs per head out of any country in the world. According to Wikipedia we have roughly seventy major gangs with around 4,000-patched members despite only having a current population of 4,000,000 people. This can leave a person wondering what the fixation is? How do we get to this point?
Photos all found on the internet. I would give credit if I knew who to credit… But thanks.
A selection of New Zealand gang patches
To get to the heart of this you must consider that New Zealand is a nation steeped in tribal and warrior tradition. In Auckland and Wellington particularly, the influence of the indigenous Maori and migrant Polynesian culture is paramount and woven so thoroughly through the general psyche of our population regardless of whether people are aware or not. Concepts of extended family and our approach to hospitality for example borrow greatly from Polynesian culture but extend right across the spectrum of our society. I believe over time this has become a defining Kiwi cultural trait. The other thing that I feel has been lent from Maori and Pacific Island culture is the particular type of ‘staunch’. This is very hard to explain to outsiders but Kiwi’s know what I’m talking about. It is almost inexplicable. It seems to draw its power from ancient custom and is particularly unique to this country and perhaps the pacific islands.
One possible suggestion why gang culture resonates with our youth here you must consider the parallels with Polynesian tradition. Now I enter this spiel with a lot of trepidation. I don’t want it to be perceived in the wrong way, this is not the only factor but it could be a key contributor. While European families built prestige and status with elitist and capitalist ideals, the Maori class system (for example) has forever been governed by mana. This is the concept of pride and respect, which can be inherited or earned. Financial status has little bearing, for example the young will show respect for their elders. People with presence or who achieve in their chosen path are treated with the utmost dignity regardless of what they earn. One could work a menial day job but be a great speaker, thinker, musician and be given the same respect as someone who has millions of dollars, maybe even more. The warriors in life are also bestowed this type of respect. The physically strong, imposing and fierce also have a kind of mana.
Throughout the 1840’s Maori and Pakeha fought intense battles over land and unlike most indigenous people fighting colonial rule, the Maori were a formidable opponent. Despite lacking the modern weapons and technology of the English their knowledge of the land, adaptability to a variety of terrain and skillful tactics played a major part in dictating the shape of our nations culture today. One key thing that Maori relied on tactically during battle were their fortresses or Pa. Creating a barrier against artillery shells, the English were often forced to fight hand to hand rendering weaponry advantages useless. This makes me think about what a Pa symbolises. I think to today’s fortified gang pads and some comparisons can be drawn.
Some of the major ethnic gangs of New Zealand wear their patches and related tattoo’s on their faces. This obviously borrows in part or greatly from the tradition of Ta Moko (traditional Maori tattooing, often on the face). Moko was generally reserved for high-ranking people or those with a high social status. In a way, the aesthetic of these gangs is like some Mad Max type urban warrior. Interestingly some of the major gangs were born from the feeling of displacement Maori youth felt during the urbanisation of New Zealand.
Paintings of Maori dignitary’s with Moko by Charles Frederick Goldie.
Displacement also played its role in the origins of the Pacific Island gangs of Auckland city. The ‘King Cobras’ the first major inner city gang in Auckland, mainly consisting of Samoan members although not strictly. The 1950’s was a time of prosperity and rapid urban growth, this promoted an influx of Polynesian migration, the opportunity for gainful employment was alluring and it often enabled Pacific Island people to support family back home as well. Like all recent migrants to any society, Pacific Islanders fell prey to racial prejudice from the more established racial groups, Maori and Pakeha alike. The King Cobras were most likely spawned from a reaction to this but fast became one of Ponsonby’s most notorious gangs.
Incredible image from ‘Polynesian Panthers’ book of activists rolling a Police car on Onslow Road, Kingsland during the 1981 anti Springbok tour protests
Image of King Cobras and associates outside Ponsonby’s Gluepot in 1990. This is from the book ‘Urban Village’.
If I could recommend any additional reading I would suggest you get these two books, ‘Polynesian Panthers’ by Melani Anae with Lautofa Iuli and Leilani Burgoyne from Raupo (Reed) publishing and ‘Urban Village’ by Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow from Random House. Incredible books and explain things a lot better than I have here.
Through the 1980’s there was a general shift in social influence in New Zealand society from one that was inherently British to something much more Americanised. Eventually the majority of popular media and entertainment became American dominated and this impacted our society greatly. The demographic of Auckland was possibly not too dissimilar to a lot of major US cities in appearance. As youth looked to television and popular music for their role models it makes perfect sense that the Pacific Island and Maori kids mostly identified with the African American and Latin American figures they saw. When considering the impact of the American street gang culture and how that came to be, you must also recognise that Eastern Samoan has been an American territory since the turn of last century. Samoan people from that region fought for the US in WWII. 60% of the American Samoan population live in the US, particularly in the West Coast, including Hawaii. Look also at one interesting religious factor, the popularity of the Mormon religion in Samoan society. Western and American Samoans alike, travel to do their ‘mission’ in the US and also inhabit Mormon strongholds like Utah. This meant that a lot of Samoan kids I knew were culture-bearers of sorts, bringing back knowledge of music, dance, fashion and graffiti. One such example is Mangere writer ‘Finer FDKNS’ lived in Los Angeles during his teens and was one such culture-bearer. On his return to New Zealand he brought photos and knowledge of tag styles from LA and is subsequently considered the godfather of the ‘Straights’ tag style now synonymous with Auckland graffiti.
Despite the popular perception that the adoption of the ‘Crips and Bloods’ was solely from ‘Colors’ there was also a fair amount of direct influence from kids having observed things first hand. The SOS or ‘Sons Of Samoa’ were a Blood gang that originated in Carson, California.
Historically the Tongan people have maintained the legends of early expansionism and it is common belief that they once governed the entire of the Pacific Islands as their empire. This notion is still considered controversial as it relies greatly on oral history, as this was the only documentation method of Polynesian people prior to European colonisation. Regardless though, there have been racial divides between Tongan and Samoan people referred to in the folklore of both cultures. These tensions have flared up in different ways through history and recent New Zealand society presents no exception to this. Like Samoans, Tongan people also migrated to Los Angeles throughout the 1970’s. Some Tongan youth aligned themselves with the predominantly black gangs like the ‘Raymond Avenue Crips’. Eventually they sought their own independence though and so you find the origins of gangs like TCG or ‘Tongan Crip Gang’. I couldn’t explain the exact mechanics of how SOS and TCG established themselves in Auckland in the 1990’s the emergence of this style of youth gang became the catalyst for a lot of violence between these two communities.
Some examples of TCG Flat Top style tags from around 1991. Photos by Ikon RTR
Outside of the major cities, the adoption of Red and Blue by the Mongrel Mob (red) and Black Power (blue) has often meant youth gangs identifying themselves as either Crip or Blood have served as their feeder gangs. It is not uncommon to encounter entire towns that wear one or the other colour to show allegiance or avoid conflict.
When I was 11 years old and in my first year of Intermediate school, I was immediately struck with the types of pressures you would expect. These years are so important in the formation of the person you become. You become exposed to social hierarchy’s that don’t exist earlier in life, you discover niche sub-cultures for the first time and start to explore music and fashion tastes that come to define you through your teen years. For me, only one type of music spoke to me at this age: Hip-Hop. It’s hard to fathom how much of a minority that made me, being one of the only white kids in my neighbourhood to be visibly ‘into’ this music. It may have been the combination of my extremely naïve idea of what constituted Hip-Hop fashion, the fact I was far less ‘gangsta’ than the Pacific Island and Maori kids or possibly that only a year or two prior I could be seen walking around the same streets in full makeshift superhero outfits – but some days it felt like I had a giant target on my back and a neon sign above my head saying “bully me”. It may have read “Stock me for my shoes and cap” but I never owned anything even close to cool enough to warrant that.
I liked Hip-Hop because I saw the creative side of it. I saw art, dance and music. I think the other kids in my area saw that too but mostly they saw ‘Gangsta’. For some of them, legendary reputations were built off rolling people or fighting well. For a guy like me, although I had plenty of fights out of necessity I was never particularly skilled with my ‘knuckle game’. I had to find other ways to survive and participating in the creative aspect of Hip-Hop came to function like a defence measure once I started exploiting it right. I can’t take full credit for this realisation either, I have to acknowledge someone else for planting those seeds of thought for me: Bonus KOA, who I met in 1991 at Kowhai Intermediate.
Bonus was a year older than me and possibly the only other white kid from around the same area that was into Rap music and graffiti. Back then he was a reasonably short and scrawny kid, quick witted and street smart. He had a way tougher upbringing than me always tended to gravitate to mischief. I don’t think he tagged Bonus back then but he was tagging. I remember him putting in requests with me for to draw gangster looking characters and he would give me instructions like “oh put this label on his overalls” or “give him shades like Eazy-E”. One time he was like “man, you should get into graffiti, you’re good at drawing, imagine how bad you’d be at graffiti!” and I was like, “Yeah man, that’s a good idea!” I could totally see already what he was getting at because in the context of the conversation we had been having, he was telling me it was my ticket to get some street-cred with the other kids we knew. I said to him “You should like draw me up a tag alphabet so I can see how all the letters are done.” And he did. The next day he gave me a piece of lined refill with all the tag letters done in TCG flat top style. I was really stoked but almost immediately started having grand plans of how I could improve on the letters and went home and started drawing pieces based on his tag shapes. I chose the name ‘Krewl” as my first tag.
Auckland KOA roll call at Mt. Eden station from 1993. Photo by Ikon RTR
New Market cinema carpark stairwell in all it’s former glory circa 1994. Photo by Ikon RTR.
Being that I was only 11 at the time I never made a serious commitment to doing graffiti after that short stint. Jump forward to 1993 and I was starting High School, attending Western Springs College. On my first few days of school I was reintroduced to a handful of 4th formers who had been the 2nd formers at Kowhai when I was in 1st form. With their one-year head start at high school life, a lot had happened and I learned pretty quickly I had a lot of catching up to do. For starters, most of them now had tag names and Bonus alongside his friend and partner in crime Bart (R.I.P.) were amongst some of the more prolific writers in the school. The originally had their own crew IGz or Immature Gonerz but by the time I was reintroduced they were representing the now infamous KOA (Kiss Our Ass) crew. KOA was also a well-respected Sydney crew and I’ve always been a bit vague as to whether there was a direct correlation between the New Zealand and Australian chapters or if it was looser than that. Either way, members of the Australian KOA and the KOA that Bonus represented both played major roles in 90’s Auckland graffiti culture.
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