The Beatnuts: Logo #336

The Beatnuts' logo - which first appeared on the cover of their breakout 1993 EP Intoxicated Demons - was detourned from the Reid Miles-designed cover for Hank Mobley's essential 1965 Blue Note LP The Turnaround.  Simple, red, direct and eminently tattooable - it's everything a good logo should be.  It's also open to interpretation; is it the forked tail of deviltry?  Is it a rudderless life suddenly seized by the blessing of pragmatism?  Pick your poison.

anticon.: Logo #294

Shaun Koplow from the anticon. label: "The ant was designed by the great Aaron Horkey of Burlesque of North America. To my best knowledge, the first appearance was on our first 12" in 1999, "Anticon Presents Hip-Hop Music For the Advanced Listener." Pretty braggadocios title, eh? Oh the past! Aaron used to go by the name Abuse and designed the Rhymesayers / Atmosphere Headshots tape series art, among other things."

Dilated Peoples: Logo #284

The Dilated Peoples cyclops was created by Brent Rollins / Ego Trip NYC in 1997 for "Third Degree," the band's first 12" on ABB Records. One of the members, DJ Babu, coined the phrase turntablism and hails from Oxnard. Oxnard! Go figure. Oxnard was in fact one of the first places on the West Coast to play hip-hop with any regularity. The prime mover of this movement was a DJ named H.T., who, last I'd heard, died in a car crash in the late '80s or so. When I brought the subject up to DJ Babu, he replied, "What?! HT! KMIX 106!!!!! I used to stay up every Saturday night to record HT...I remember when he passed and all they did was replay old HT recordings for a week, then the station folded...that brings me back!!!!!!!"

Howard David Thomas, November 22, 1962 - August 14, 1988. Rest in peace, Mr. DJ.

Logo #156: Beat Junkies

Designed in large part by "Green Lantern" artist Martin Nodell in 1940, this design was in small part appropriated by Jason "J.Rocc" Jackson in 1992. J.Rocc: "I use to work at a comic book store and DC had a promotion for Green Lantern where they gave away rings so I grab some and gave 'em to the crew. Pretty much the same time we started the crew, we used that as the logo. We just tried to freak it somewhat." Rhettmatic: The person who designed our Beat Junkie logo, as well as most of our artwork, is a good friend of ours...Ricardo Cofinco, a.k.a. Rich 1. He is the head designer and co-owner of the shoe line Creative Recreation, and is part of the L.A.-based graffiti crew NASA (No Art Survives After). How we "got" the Beat Junkie logo? That credit goes to J.Rocc; he is the founder and president of the Beat Junkies (that's why we call him the "Funky President"...after the James Brown song). When he founded the crew in 1992, he was working at a comic book shop. He took a bag of Green Lantern glow-in-the-dark rings and gave to us as way to proclaim our association to the crew. Basically, the "official" Beat Junkie members were the only ones to wear the rings. And when we used to compete in all the DMC/ITF DJ battle circuits, we would all wear our Green Lantern rings around our necks to make our presence known...it would be really funny, 'cause there would be a least three to four of us in these battles at the same time - cats would be asking..."Who's the muthafuckas wearing these Green Lantern rings winning all these DJ battles?!"

Logo #121: Cypress Hill

Designed by Dante Ariola and Mike Miller for Cypress Hill's 1991 Columbia Records debut. South Gate, home base for the hip-hop fusion band, also has a fairly active punk rock scene, centered around the remains of the Allen Theatre. Regardless! The Cypress Hill "joint" "I Ain't Goin' Out Like That" will see you through times that ordinarily may present themselves as humiliating, prideless and base. Yes, the lyrics are outwardly just about smokin' lotsa dope - with the shooting, and the killing, and the revenging - but just think of it as a metaphor. What's a metaphor? For making you think, of course.

Logo #89: Jurassic 5

Designed by Jurassic 5 bandmember Charlie "Chali 2na" Stewart in 1997. Perhaps their best-known hit is "What's Golden," the Bizarro-world analogue to Moloko's "Fun For Me," both running neck-and-neck in the wordplay sweeps. In case you find it difficult to keep score, 2na is the "verbal Herman Munster" on "What's Golden." Such a great line! In 2000, Jurassic 5's van skidded into a ditch and 2na came out of the experience with a titanium plate in his head and a closer bond with Allah (he's a Sunni Muslim). Yet any faith will come in handy now because Jurassic 5 is in the process of breaking up. Jurassic 5 member Zaakir, speaking to News of Australia, admitted, "Even though we do what we do, (that) doesn’t mean we’re the best communicators (emph. mine). For certain members, it’s been brewing for a while - I’ve heard in passing there are things that could have been brought up a long time ago about how people were feeling that weren’t said."

Logo #42: Cut Chemist

Designed by Cut Chemist (née Lucas McFadden) and Keith Tamashiro in the year of our supposed space odyssey. Chemistry: "I came up with it as a temporary logo for the "Product Placement" tour with DJ Shadow in 2001. Flyers and posters were going into production that day and I needed an image to represent me. I scribbled it on a piece of paper and gave it to Keith Tamashiro at Soap Design to clean it up. I never thought it would be permanent..." A fairly good Cut Chemist rundown from the end of 2006 can be found here. A simple rebus (scissors cut + chemist calculates), it is what it is and it holds within the image the simple grace of becoming itself.