Angel 179’s colorful murals dot the Seattle-area cityscape with whimsical creatures and graceful lines. She’s been painting for a decade, and shows no signs of slowing down; given the opportunity, the opinionated artist behind the murals will deftly transform not just concrete but skateboards, sneakers, and stretches of canvas. “If you don’t love it, don’t do it,” Angel says firmly. “Go into everything with that intent.” Angel isn’t in it just for the love of art, though: she is dedicated to making her community a more beautiful place both visually and spiritually.
Angel got her start tagging in the CD, and though she made a quick and earnest foray into breakdancing, her true element was the visual. In middle school, she began to paint murals as a volunteer for community organizations and schools. “I had a really good upbringing from the community. Seattle’s good for that,” Angel says, and credits a tight group of friends and mentors with helping her to clarify her calling. “They were able to help me come up with my own definition of what hip hop is, what I think graffiti is. And from there I was able to develop my ideas of what being a woman in hip hop is, a person of Mexican descent in hip hop is.”
The talented painter shows her artwork nationally and makes a living doing freelance graphic design. In addition, the community support she received as a teenager meant so much to Angel that she has returned as an adult to teach classes to youth at Seattle public schools and community centers. “I want to help people who were like me growing up, who were confused, of color. There were people who came back for me, and I want to do that for others,” she says. “I can’t live off that, but it’s something I’ve dedicated myself to doing.”
Though she firmly believes in the power of community affirmation and mentoring, Angel doesn’t shy away from controversy. Her work often features religious symbols, a choice not always popular with her family. “My grandparents don’t like that I paint Catholic things, they think it’s blasphemous. It’s scaring my grandma,” she says. But as an artist, Angel knows that provocative symbols can be the perfect way to explore universal and personal human emotions. “The cranky baby Jesus that [Angel's Virgin Mary] holds, that’s kinda like me, scared or confused, angry or hungry,” she explains. “When people look at my [work featuring Virgin Mary], they say, “oh, is that woman you?” And I say, “No, that little crying thing is me!”
A woman in the male-dominated world of hip hop, Angel has seen and experienced her share of sexism. “Everybody thinks you’re a ho or someone’s girlfriend, and so they overlook you. I’ve had that happen at art shows, even, with people on the inside of the community… A lot of my artwork is mistaken for men’s artwork, they would think it was my boyfriend’s art, or that it was my boyfriend who got me into graffiti. But I was into graffiti before I met anybody,” she says, making it clear this is not about impressing a guy or following someone else’s lead. “Seattle was always a little bit more open for women… But we’re always gonna have to deal with sexism.”
With so many jobs and an increasingly hectic travel schedule, when does Angel paint? “I get up super early. I love the quiet. I don’t think if I was working a real-deal 9-5 job that I would be able to do art, and I would just come home and watch TV. Which is not what I want to do.” Ever moving forward, Angel’s excited about her plans for the future. She talks about doing murals with kids in Mexico, or pushing the boundaries of her artwork here in the States: “I want to take my paintings and make them three-dimensional. Make it a performance.”
Find out more about Angel 179 and her art on her website, and on her Myspace.
Written by Katelyn Hackett. Katelyn covers local hiphop and other topics for Seattlest.com, Seattle Sound Magazine and writes freelance for other publications.
Erika White, aka Kylea of Beyond Reality, is a Seattle icon and veteran of Northwest hip hop. “I was in the sixth grade when hip hop started coming along, so I’ve been involved in hip hop culture since the ’80s,” she explains. “Look at a picture from 1985 to 1987. Everyone has a picture with your Run DMC shirt and your arms crossed.” But unlike many of her fellow hip hop enthusiasts, Kylea took her high school passion for rhyming to the next level: she released, marketed, and received critical acclaim for her single, “I Reality,” and, years later, for her solo album produced by Bean One called A Soul’s Journey. Kylea’s involvement in hip hop, however, goes well beyond her released work.
In the mid-’90s, Kylea co-founded Jasiri Media Group and was at the forefront of the burgeoning Seattle hip hop scene. She can tell you stories about everyone from Sir Mix-A-Lot (”In high school he would dj and make mixtapes, compilation tapes, put on little shows… Anyone who was hating on Mix, that’s just because they’re haters”) to Jonathan Moore, aka Wordsayer, from Source of Labor (”He was the founding person getting the local scene opened up, doing shows with artists coming through town like Ice Cube and The Roots”). Kylea can track the growth of the scene from virtually no local performers back in the late ’80s to the present day, when “a rapper in town is a dime a dozen.”
“The Seattle hip hop scene is about who you know, and who they know,” Kylea says. “More than money, you have to have support. And money can’t necessarily buy you that all the time.” Beyond Reality is a family business these days, though it began as a collaborative effort between Kylea and one of her best friends from high school. Kylea’s son, now 10, acts as hype-man and her nephew, AB, backs them up on the 1’s and 2’s. Organic, feel-good, soulful: The Stranger has dubbed Beyond Reality “true school” and named Kylea the top female emcee in Seattle “since the mid-90s”.
Performances are few and far between nowadays, but Kylea’s not complaining. “I feel like I’m a dope emcee. I can put out a lot of these cats that think they’re dope emcees hands down, with my mouth covered up. … I could still pull it off if I wanted to, but anyone who knows the history or wants to know, they can go to EMP, holler at me, do some research, and they can find out about me. …There’s other things in life I want to do that don’t necessarily involve me being an emcee.”
What is Kylea doing now? “I’m djing. I throw parties, and I cook… My son’s getting ready to be ten. I don’t have to be rhyming, but music, food and friends are always gonna be something that I’ll be involved in.” Kylea’s also talked about opening a restaurant. Her advice to women getting started in hiphop: “Stay true to yourself, build alliances with other people, and do your research. Take criticism, but don’t let anyone tell you to dress like this or do this or say it like this if that’s not really you. Go out, check out the scene, find a way to find your place and do what you have to do.”
Street Performing in Seattle Back in the Day circa ‘83
Lane Davey, known in b-boy circles as Laneski, was one of Seattle’s very first b-girls. Of course, back in ‘83, “nobody used the term B-Girl,” she writes. “Being a girl [breaker] was such a novelty, it wasn’t really a problem.” And dancing as a career? “Not in my day. That really cracks me up. I would have to watch MTV all day long just to see one Hiphop video, if I was lucky.” At the age of 14, Laneski was inspired by the dance moves in Michael Jackson’s videos to take a breakdancing class offered at the Bellevue Athletic Club by the Seattle Circuit Breakers Crew. Her gymnastics background gave her the strength and agility to quickly pick up the tough moves they taught, and “the guys in the crew sort of adopted me by the end of the six week class and began asking me to dance with them whenever I could.”
She was mentored by Dee Rock, a b-boy, dj and leader of the Seattle Circuit Breakers now known more famously as DJ Mr Supreme. “He taught me all about the culture, the style, and gave me a tape of b-boy footage which became my learning tool. You weren’t a b-boy if you didn’t know what was up with the culture and the style, and you had to be able to tag your name and walk all funky. You had to know what was new and fresh in every element.” Laneski and her fellow breakers paid close attention to fashion and style. She remembers sailor hats with graffiti on the flip, Adidas suits, kangol berets, Pumas, name belt buckles and chains, Lee jeans and plaid Gotcha shorts. “It was strictly New York. Anything from L.A. was considered wack.”
DeeSki, aka Joe’l Herd, taught Lane how to dance in the clubs: the prep, the peewee herman, the cabbage patch. “People would battle with those dances too. Some got so funky, they would literally be dancing with their heads just a few inches from the floor. The clubs had so much crazy energy. I got in all those places at 14 and 15 years old. It wasn’t strict back then, even the lamest fake IDs were fine.” Battles certainly weren’t restricted to the clubs, though. “I went to the mall to find a battle, and if you had your shoes tied b-boy style, you were fair game. My girlfriend used to get mad at me for walking around looking at everyone’s shoelaces all the time.” Now, though, things are more organized. “We all kinda know each other and we know what everyone’s going to do.”
“It was about power moves back then,” Laneski explains. “It was raw and we were making it up as we went along. You didn’t hear people saying that’s the right way or wrong way to do something; it wasn’t wrong, it was new.” Though b-boys today may look more polished with their moves, “it looks so practiced that it all starts to look the same after awhile, and everyone’s worried about if they did it right or wrong instead of just getting funky and being spontaneous.” Laneski specialized in the power moves, such as flairs, swipes, turtles, and suicides, and this was more than good enough. “I would go in the circle and not even uprock or footwork or anything, just pop into a move and I would win.”
As one of the pioneers of the b-girl movement, Laneski has a unique perspective on what it’s like to be a woman in the breaker culture. “Too many girls think because they are cute they can go in the circle and do the same basic footwork ten times in a row to get attention., but they are preventing the guys from keeping the momentum of their circle….The women need to earn their respect. Girls try to be a spectacle and push the girl thing sometimes when they need to just fit right in with the guys and practice hard enough to keep up with the circle. There will always be those guys who don’t want to see a girl in the circle, but…for every guy who insults you, there are probably 100 who secretly admire your dedication to do what you do.”
For Laneski, being white was more of an issue than being female. But that doesn’t mean she’s not angry about the hiphop industry’s insults to women, or that she’s happy with the way media portrays her fellow females. She writes about attending B-Girl Be in Minneapolis and encountering many unheard-of female hiphop artists from all four elements, some of whom had been performing as long as she has. “We are talking some seriously talented, intelligent and beautiful b-girls that never get acknowledged, which makes it hard for other women to get inspired to have skills.”
Is the outlook bright? “Women are coming together, discovering our own roots and embracing our own impact. We are almost our own element since we do things our own way without own flava.” That’s a yes. And Laneski’s advice to women in hiphop: “Remember that fame and fortune does not bring you happiness, but following your destiny does. Hiphop is a calling, as much or more than it is a career.”
Angel at work
