Q&A With Artists Oddisee and Elle on the influence of Basquiat.

In its latest collection, the eyewear brand Etnia Barcelona, which finds inspiration in the art world, pays homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat. Drawing on graffiti and street art, the pieces in the series also include references to jazz, rap, punk, pop culture, and comics — a breadth of influence that Basquiat's work came to embody.

The art of Basquiat has endured long after his death in 1988, at the age of 27. A son of Haitian and Puerto Rican immigrants, he was raised in Brooklyn, and began his career as a graffiti artist scrawling provocative and playful fragments of poetry on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s. In just a few years, he became a bona fide celebrity whose paintings were selling for major sums at galleries around the world. And then he was gone, a casualty of heroin.

His paintings — at once menacing and gleeful, incorporating pieces of debris found on the street, snippets of language, and faces from African-American history wreathed with haloes — were clearly political, but the message seemed to come from the wellspring of his personal experience. Though fractured and cryptic, all the components on the canvas were organically related, expressions from a single, idiosyncratic mind. It was art both high-brow and low-brow, sacred and profane. It was quintessentially New York.

In this two-part series, VICE speaks with two artists who capture something of Basquiat's message and spirit of creative adventure.

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Elle is a Brooklyn-based street artist best known for her striking female figures, who are often cloaked in the pelts of wolves and rendered in bright color in an array of mediums. Just a few years ago, as a masked graffiti artist, she worked under the cover of dark, scaling buildings and billboards to tag her name. Now her work is for sale in every Ikea. She's regularly invited to paint wall-length murals in cities throughout the world. In recent years, her work has appeared in the Urban Nation museum in Berlin; been displayed at a joint exhibition with the photographer Martha Cooper in Brooklyn; and been projected on the facade of the New Museum in Manhattan. She no longer feels the need to conceal her face.

Lately, when not traveling, Elle has worked out of a studio in Los Angeles. This is where she was when we called recently to chat about her career, the influence of Basquiat, anonymity, and brave women climbing really high things to get "where they don't belong."

VICE: Does the art of Basquiat have a personal relevance to you?
Elle:I do have a Basquiat crown tattooed on my arm. It's one of my only tattoos. I actually took it to have another meaning: It stands for my crew of women doing really awesome things, breaking through glass ceilings. Basquiat was a graffiti artist when he started, back when he used to write "SAMO." He was a really nice poet, and I think his work is beautiful. He was one of the originators, writing poetry on walls with spray paint in very much of a graffiti fashion.

Like Basquiat, you started out doing art on the streets, and have evolved toward more "legit," commissioned pieces. When you paint outdoors, do you generally have permission these days?
The murals have pretty much always been with permission, because it's something that takes more than an hour. The rollers, the graffiti, the street art — that was always illegal. Eventually, Liquitex paint — this is when I was having my show with Martha Cooper — reached out to me, said they wanted to sponsor me. And I said, "I don't think so. What does that mean?" "We just want to give you free product." "All right, I guess I can do that." Then I realized I had all this paint. This is great. It's not just a little roller on a billboard anymore. I can paint something massive, right by the freeway. So I started doing people's walls because I had the paint. Then I started getting invited to paint.

I know in the early days you were always masked. What was that decision process like when you decided to reveal yourself and work as a "regular" artist?
I was doing a lot of really illegal graffiti for a time, so I was anonymous. There's the Vandal Squad in New York that keeps tabs on graffiti artists. If you're doing really big, illegal graffiti, they hunt you down and surprise-attack you at your house, and take all your stuff for evidence for the court case. So I was literally filling up fire extinguishers with paint and spraying them 30 to 50 feet high on buildings, doing things that could have gotten me into some serious trouble. As I started to evolve, I started painting murals. If you're sitting on a wall for days, people would come up and ask to take a photo. And I was like, yeah, just not my face. But then I started feeling really silly wearing a mask. I feel dumb. And I'm not doing quite as much illegal work anymore, so I'm just going to come out.

You're originally from the West Coast, right?
I am. I'm originally from the Bay Area.

When you left for New York eight years ago, what were your plans and goals?
I had gone to Brandeis University for the painting program. I was doing oil painting, kind of traditional style. The teachers were really awfully, and kind of sexist. It was terrible. So after a year I quit, and I gave up art.

One night, a friend and I were Skyping. He asked me what I'm doing next year. I said, "I have no idea. I'm quitting this program; I don't know what to do." And he was like, "Why don't we move to New York?" I was already on the East Coast. I had one suitcase out here. I had never really been to New York before. "Let's do it."

So I took the Chinatown bus down, and we starting looking for apartments. I ended up finding one off the Morgan stop, which, eight years ago, was nothing but raw warehouses. We were living with these people who were obsessed with aliens. They all met on a body-alteration website. They all did body-scar art, and implants — alien-head implants in their hands; horns in their head. We had flying cockroaches in the house. We had rats and bedbugs. I was like, "All right, so this is New York. Let's go!"

That's when I kind of saw street art for the first time. I saw Swoon and Gaia. I thought, This is amazing. I have to do this.

Is it fair to say New York got you back into art?
Yeah, 100 percent. I was so disillusioned by the art world. I thought what Gaia and Swoon were doing was really spectacular. I thought it was a huge gift they were giving anyone who walked by. I'm so grateful it's there. When I saw, I was like, "I want to do that."

So is this the point you move from canvases and oil to spray paint and walls?
Yes. Part of it was that I was living in a closet. I had no money for a storage unit; I had no room for painting. And the street art you could just draw on a piece of paper, mix flour and water, and put it up. So it was very cheap and easy.

The first piece I put up was on a Brooklyn street-art blog the next day. I was like, "Oh my God, that's so cool!" They liked it so much they took a photo of it and uploaded it. So for me, it was this whole experience of the art immediately living its own life, getting to interact with people that walked by. It was much more exciting than working alone in the studio. There was a dialogue all of a sudden. I was hooked, immediately.

And then I met this graffiti artist through some friends. He hated street art. He started to get me to read the letters, and I got really intrigued by graffiti, but he wouldn't take me out. He said he didn't want to get me arrested. So I started trying to get my girlfriends to come with me — until one by one they got arrested. But I kept going.

I had started street art with the name "Oopsy Daisy," cause I thought it was really funny. But then I started to do rollers and things at the top of buildings, and I figured out it was way too long. Anthony Lister actually helped me come up with the name "Elle," which means "she" in French. At the time, I didn't really see any female street artists, so it was important for me to have a really female name, and be super pink and girly, more so than I am in regular life. Also, I wanted to prove that we can be out there, too. I was just killing it with the graffiti, going really hard. And then I got back into street art again, and had the show with Martha, which is when I started painting walls.

Do you feel that your work is political?
Not political, but I am a feminist, for sure. More than anything, I just like to champion the idea that there are a lot of women in the world that just don't have the same opportunity as males. There are a lot of stereotypes that women shouldn't do things that men should. So for me, it's been really important to prove I can do it just as well as, if not better than, a dude. That's kind of my MO And I love the female form. I love putting up a really strong, beautiful woman. There's just so much male presence dominating everything, we need the ladies represented.

Do you ever struggle about how ambiguous you should make your message?
There was a point where I was painting these 10-foot-tall female goddesses. I was putting them up on the street as woman guardians. They were my girlfriends that had modeled for me. So I think that when you die, your energy is recirculated, and we're all sort of made up of these past energies that have been with people. The way it made sense to me that they would be eyes. So along the breasts and elbows, or anywhere that was sensual, there were a bunch of eyes looking out from this person.

At one point, I overheard a guy who was like, "Oh man, I love these female forms. I totally understand what it's like now to be a female and have someone always looking at your boobs." Because of all the eyes. I was like, "Oh man, wow, that's so not what I was doing." But I didn't tell him that. It's not my job to tell people what to think when they see my art. Everyone's going to see things differently based on their past experiences, what they see, what they know. So even if you wanted to tell people, you can't.

It's like Basquiat, where there is most certainly a message in there, but it's encrypted and never too on-the-nose.
You should look up this artist named Rambo. He does work in the city very similar to Basquiat, in that it's written-word poetry. He wrote me something recently. We were talking about how as artists we want to just keep working, and how if we loved everything that we did, we wouldn't keep working. And he texted me this phrase I thought was so beautiful, that read: "Steady steadfast to secure the lasting echo." It's like creating art to create a lasting echo, something that lives beyond your lifetime. That's when you know you're making really good art — when it's something that will stay when you're gone.

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Oddisee is a Brooklyn-based rapper and hip-hop producer. Like Basquiat, he was a child of immigration: His father is from Sudan. Oddisee's mother, meanwhile, is an African-American from the Washington, DC, area, where he grew up. Over 11 albums and scores of EPs and mixtapes — all of which he wrote, performed, and produced himself — he's honed an artistic voice that is thoroughly soulful and warm, with plenty of horns and live instruments, and an expansive approach to rhythm that uses varied time signatures and tempos.

He's now on the road, just like he is for about half the year, every year. He was somewhere in Upstate New York when we called him to talk about his artistic process, identities, and influences, along with the economic realities of being an independent musician with a message in today's world.

VICE: You're known for dividing your time between instrumental and vocal albums, which you produce and write yourself. Do you prefer making one over the other?
Oddisee:I just work on music. Hip-hop is an interesting genre that's constantly being reduced to beats and rhymes. And I think that's a corner it worked itself into. No other genre really experiences this. Ask a singer-songwriter which one they prefer more. I think rap really created that question for itself. And that's something I'm doing my best to fight against, for people to see rap music as an art form, and critique it as such. I see myself as a hip-hop artist. I love making the instrumentation and lyrics equally. Actually, one begets the other. As soon as I finish making a track, I want to write to it. As soon as I finish writing a song, I want to produce to it. They have this relationship that's constantly going back and forth.

Do you have any formal music training?
No, I don't have any formal music training. But I was next-door neighbors with Garry Shider, the bass player of Parliament-Funkadelic. I grew up with his son. He had a full analog studio in his basement, and we would jam with his children more than play in the playground. From there, my mother sings; my father plays the oud — a traditional Middle Eastern guitar. So I was born around music.

Does your dad still listen to traditional Sudanese music?
That's all he listens to. My dad, to this day, hasn't heard a single song I've ever done. That's a whole other interview about first-generation kids.

Does that bother you?
No, not at all. I love the fact that we've always been at the level where we just talk business. He asks me how's work, where I'm going, how's my health, how's my life. And that's it. He didn't grow up on rap, and even if he listens to me, he'd only be doing it to support me, not because he genuinely appreciates it.

You told me before that your father moved back to Sudan about a decade ago. Do you get a chance to visit ever?
Every year. Usually no less than a month. I grew up going there three months every year. My summer vacations were spent there as a child. Now, I wish I could stay three months, but work, you know. I usually go for about a month now.

Have you ever gotten a chance to perform there?
I have not performed there. I meant to do it this summer, but I'm not sure if it has been confirmed. I'm not really at a place yet where I want to perform in Sudan. Sudan definitely has a hip-hop scene that's growing, but tomorrow, if I were to perform there, it would be an audience of about 15–20,000 people. I would say 98 percent of them would be there because I was Sudanese from America, not because any of them knew my music. Until that number gets a bit more in my favor, I'm don't want to perform there.

I just don't want to do a gig in Sudan because I'm Sudanese, knowing that I'll have this massive crowd but they don't know the music, or if it wasn't me, they wouldn't even listen to the type of music I make. They still listen to Top 40 out there. It makes me feel weird.

You've managed to keep a lot of control over your music and image. Has that been difficult to maintain as you get more of a profile?
Operating independently has been beautiful for me. I've never really been faced with many issues where it's been difficult for me to maintain my integrity. I think that's one of the biggest advantages of being an independent artist, is that you do have more control over your expression, over how you're represented, and, most importantly, how people receive your work.

The Internet has definitely made it easier for independent artists to be heard, without being dependent on radio or major labels. Has it become easier?
I definitely think my career was right place, right time. I feel that had I come about a bit later, I would have been lost in the generic sea, that is, the oversaturation of the Internet. Had I attempted to start my career prior, I would have been bitter that things weren't based on the old construct of the music industry, and I wouldn't have been able to adjust and adapt to where we are now.

So you're from the DC area, and moved to New York City about six years ago. What brought you here?
I didn't move to New York to make it; I moved to New York to capitalize on what I had already made. I wanted to be in closer proximity to the creative industries: journalists, photographers, graphic designers, video directors, licensing companies, all the things that surround my own industry.

I was always drawn to New York as a kid, through graffiti, through turntable-ism, through fashion. I was always looking up to the buildings, wondering why the different boroughs had different sounds, and how could one city create so much art. Because I came from such a small place, where everyone had to basically fit in the same venues, regardless of what they were interested in.

The sound of the music I make definitely comes from New York. Specifically, Tribe Called Quest is my favorite hip-hop group, and the reason I started making music in the first place.

Are there certain sounds or styles people respond to down south that don't fly in New York, or vice versa?
Definitely. Through my travels, I've witnessed all around the world these different songs and rhythm patterns that people love that don't go off anywhere else. I like a lot of music from the UK; I lived in the UK for quite some time. There are certain rhythms I love from grime, from dubsteb, or two-step, and a lot of times when I play them around my friends, the rhythms don't translate. They don't know what the hell we're listening to.

At the same time, I come from the District of Columbia, where we grew up on go-go music, which is our local form of music based around live instrumentation. And if I play go-go music outside of DC, especially in New York, I get looked at like I'm insane. Whereas a lot of my cousins, if I come back home playing a lot of older, East Coast music that I grew up loving, to my cousins, who grew up on nothing but Southern music, they look at me like I'm not necessarily just an alien but an old alien as well.

Are your cousins all about trap?
Yeah, trap music is king. DC is a very Southern city.

I think it's fair to say trap music has a pretty destructive message, generally. As an artist and lyricist who grew up on Tribe Called Quest, do you feel a need to respond against that message?
No, in honesty. I don't feel the need to respond against it. I feel the need to provide a difference, to give people an option, and create some sort of balance. I create an alternative, and give people a choice.

Do you consider your music political?
I think anyone listening to my music would quickly put the tags "political" or "socially conscious." But all of my music is based on sheer observation. I realize now that many people don't observe the same thing. But the world we're living in right now, with such a crazy climate of politics, we're at a crossroads in society at so many levels, that I don't see how my music could be about anything else right now.

As a Muslim rapper, do you feel a responsibility to give voice to a group that's been maligned and traditionally doesn't have much of a visibility in hip-hop?
Sure. But as much as people would want me to, I don't want to paint myself as a posterboy for anybody's agenda or propaganda. I am Muslim. I don't necessarily think I make Muslim music, because I make secular music.

But I am also a rap artist, and rap is about your reality. So my reality and experiences as an American Muslim definitely will find their way into my music, just like my financial situation or my love life. Just because I talk about any one of those particular things doesn't make me those things, you understand.

On the topic of influences finding their way into your work, do you draw inspiration from other forms of art?
Architecture plays a big role. I'm a big fan of Scandinavian furniture, and how it's very minimalistic without sacrificing aesthetics for quality. Functionality is very high; there's no excess of materials. That's something that I've always tried to do with my music: strip down the bells and whistles but, at the same time, not compromise the quality and the substance.

I'm also inspired by a lot of art. People like Picasso and Dalí and Basquiat. People who took their cities and their worlds around them and incorporated that into their work, who were very uncompromising in their process but still managed to capture the eyes of mainstream America.

I'm fascinated by people like Basquiat. How can you come from the worst days in New York City and manage to capture the hearts and minds of the art world? I think if Basquiat was a hip-hop artist, he'd have been an underground rapper. I definitely feel that when I see his work.

I have some of his work hanging in my studio, actually. It always gives me hope that the kind of music I make still has the potential to have a broader appeal.

One of the things I find so appealing about Basquiat's art is how adroitly it walks the line between being cryptic and political. Like, all the images and clipped sentences and crossed-out words make you feel that his entire message is there, if you could only piece it back together. As a lyricist, do you ever worry about making things too clear?
Definitely. I think the best art is art that's left to interpretation. And that's any genre, any medium. My music is no exception. I definitely try to steer the listener in a general direction of where I'm coming from, but I prefer to write in layers, to leave that open to the person listening to it. I'm fascinated when I see reviews of my music and my lyrics, from journalists and fans alike, and how many times they've gotten things completely wrong. And there's so many times things have been spot on, where I say, "Wow, I feel like this person who reviewed me knows me." In the end, that's what I want. I want it to be open to that interpretation.

This article was paid for by Etnia Barcelona and was created independently from VICE's editorial staff.