My guest today is say Adams.
He grew up in New York City during this amazing time when graffiti ruled the subways.
Hip hop and new wave were kind of changing the face of music and converging with the downtown punk and like studio art meets street art scene.
And as a lover of music and an artist from a young age, say found himself at the center of it all, making a name, first as a graffiti artist around the city, and then becoming a part of that legendary downtown art scene that included people like Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and so many others.
And along the way, he ended up kind of becoming fast friends with the members of Beastie Boys, started creating all of their designs for their merch, their promos, and eventually even their iconic graffiti logo.
And that launched say into the world of hip hop, where he became creative director of Def Jam's in house design department and helped design the visual identities of so many of hip hop's biggest names over the years.
And since leaving that world, he has embraced a blend of commercial work, designing for many of the world's most iconic brands, and also really deepening into the fine art world.
With his work now in private collections, galleries, institutions, museums, including places like the Smithsonian, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, and so many others.
He's also co authored the art and design of hip hop designed def Jam Recordings, the first 25 years of the last great record label.
So excited to share se's infectious energy and passion and just his powerful pop art style, and so many of the behind the scenes stories that have defined his truly remarkable and incredible career and life.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
So much fun for me to be able to sit down with you.
Cause there are so many different moments I wanna touch down in.
Okay.
It's like you've lived so many different.
It's all part of the same story.
Yeah, but there are a whole bunch of really big subplots.
I appreciate you saying that, because I'm certainly at a point now where I can see it.
And for so often I was sort of just doing whatever I was doing and not really, you know, really taking stock of it.
And now I'm at a point where I can sort of, while I'm still working, I can look at it and go, oh, wow, I didn't know that was going to happen.