Kid Acne: Hip Hop, Council Pop & More
Prolific Sheffield-based graffiti artist, illustrator and rap
MC Kid Acne (aka Edna), talks to Annie Bowles about breaking the
underground rules and creating his own fantasy universe.
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Kid Acne is a talented
chap, who has created a remarkable fantasy world populated
by wild women warriors and scary monsters. Interested, I
delved a bit deeper and swiftly discovered his prolific output
as a long-time graffiti artist. And when I also found his
music I was over the moon. I have always said that while
certain musical genres such as hip-hop appeal to me on one
level, they'd mean
a whole lot more to me personally if they contained references
I could actually identify with. Imagine my joy then, to come
across Kid Acne's remarkable lo-fi, old-skool hip-hop, which
comes infused with references to the Happy Shopper, combine
harvesters, buying take-aways from 'Abra-kebab-ra' and clothes
from Sue Ryder charity shops. A long way from south central
LA, Kid Acne's new album, Council Pop, is UK hip-hop which
tells it like it is growing up in a tiny midlands town, then
relocating to a middle-sized northern city. Wanting to find
out more. I popped up to Sheffield to meet this creative
whirlwind and all round nice bloke.
'I got interested in painting graffiti when I was twelve,
sand started going out and nicking |
spray paint and doing
all of that stuff. For years I was really into making comics too,
and somehow it's just merged into one thing. My personal style is
drawn from a combination of graffiti and underground fanzines and
comics. In the 1990s there were comics such as Slouch, Deadline and
Tank Girl, which inspired me. Also old books by people like Vaughn
Bode who does all the fantasy art, and Rick Griffin with the flying
eyeball. Its interesting to research it back to create something
new. Boris Vallejo did the Conan the Barbarian posters and he was
a big influence. Also a lot of American epic films: because their
knowledge of history is non existent they just seem to make it up,
so you end up with these costumes that are half Roman, half Viking
and set in some kind of medieval time warp. I like the fact they're
so liberal with their reference points.
if you're going to break the law to do something, then why not
break a few rules of the scene as well? It's boring to have this
textbook underground stuff
A lot of people in scenes don't really like people experimenting,
or anyone who's on the periphery. You do something different and
people either love it or hate it and it's that separation
that I like. I had that response when I moved to Sheffield. I was
a bumpkin painter and I got here and thought, "oh brilliant, I'll
paint all the walls", but for the first two years, everything I
did got crossed out. People couldn't understand it. At the
same time other people here have been more than enthusiastic.
There's been a definite trend in the past year, towards 'street
art' as opposed to just graffiti, with all of these big icons you
see round Brick Lane, London, and all the paste-up posters. It's
a really good technique to get illustrations out in the street
and of course stencils have been popular since Banksy, but it's
got a lifetime. There will always be people on the bandwagon and
you have to keep your distance from that. Some of those street
art posters that you see around London now, there's not much difference
between them and Paul Frank T-shirts. I prefer the Paul Frank stuff
because they are just selling it and being honest about what it
is. I think a lot of people try to dress stuff up as being underground
and 'keeping it real', and that just keeps it boring. You have
to keep your moving and incorporate new ideas
Kid Acne's album 'Council Pop' is available at better record shops
Extracted from a longer illustrated feature which appeared in
issue 4 of Nude
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