Hip hop culture in Art and Animation
Im looking for hip hop influenced artwork. As I am in my final year of university I have a huge quantity of research to do. My biggest influence is urban music, so after a few hours of looking through blogs and websites i have found some great links to share with everyone.
The Boondocks
The Boondocks is an American animated series created by Aaron McGruder for the american TV channel Adult Swim. It is based upon McGruder's comic strip, which he started at the end of his college studies.
The Boondocks is a social satire of American culture and race relations (or stereotypes in the world), revolving around the lives of the Freeman family: ten-year-old Huey, his younger brother, eight-year-old Riley, and their grandfather, Robert. Below is a quck youtube click of the animated series. If you haven't seen any before, its extremely funny but has extremely BAD LANGUAGE.
The artwork is anime influenced but with a hip hop twist. Each series usually has a new character based on an iconic urban artist. The hip hop fashion culture is also expressed through different characters. Some having baggy jeans, jewelry, baseball caps and hoodys. I believe this has been the first comic/ animated series to represent hip hop culture and just the The Simpsons, it is the pioneer of this style so it will stay around for a long time.
Click here to visit the Boondocks Website
Blockhedz
There are lot of hip hop artists that are inspired by superheroes and supervillians. Artist like Big Punisher, Chali 2na, DJ Clark Kent have all obviously started a career by using their favorite characters to kick boost start their music success.
Creators of Blokhedz, Brandon Schultz and the Mad Twiinz, Mike and Mark Davis, write and illustrate the comic book series. The story is about an inner-city MC called Blak, battling the cold streets of Empire City. Boondocks is different as it feeds of stereotypes and media influences to produce storylines, where as Blokheds is more far fetched in charac