So I was busy grinding away at my day job at the time, up in Culver City. It was on this floor of a building created to house multiple businesses who shared common utilities in order to make things cheaper collectively. It was this on the way out start-up called LuxeYard that I had been at for over a year. The company was under the cloud of some major lawsuits and I was one of 3 people left standing in the company out of more than a hundred worldwide. I remember going in every day, trying to get work done, hoping that by some miracle things would turn around, it never did. It totally bummed me out. Towards the end, during those final days, I was super light on work and on one particular afternoon was going off on a little personal illustration project on my badass 27″ Cintiq monitor I was given to work on there. I remember it perfectly. It was a rose with a dollar bill coming out the middle, something to represent fake beauty or something. And this guy stops at the door to our office and was like “yo, that shit is fresh”.
That was it, that started the next few years of consulting work for the Wu Music Group, from branding to merch I was designing for some living legends. WMG was started by Divine who was RZA from the Wu Tang Clans brother. He was a solid dude and always paid. I really thought this was when my life would change and I would start on this roller coaster ride through the hip-hop music industry. That didn’t happen but at least I got to make some cool shit along the way.
As to what’s been going with WMG since I last worked with them I don’t know, the site is down and haven’t heard any word. I’m not completely surprised as there were a lot of highs and lows amongst the group as a whole. Nobody wants to be the oguy being led by someone else. From what I gathered, at this point in everyone’s career they all felt they owned equal rights to everything so getting much done that required everyone’s cooperation was often difficult. I wish Divine and RZA the best of luck in whatever they continue to do moving forward be it WMG or other new ventures. They were always good to me so I’ll always be in their corner. What a cool experience it all was for me. Really feel lucky, I mean shit, I was listening to these guys over 20 years ago, trip on life!