Malik Madera AKA MILK
interview excerpt
Milk: I end up becoming a LoLife in early or like late ‘96 during that time , when you know, a lot of LoLifes originated from Brownsville or Crown Heights. But Bushwick has its own history. There’s a lot of history that comes out of Bushwick. Especially for um, not just like clothing, but really more for the arts scene. Bushwick has a lot of history on it. So, growing up, like I always, I didn’t really see too many LoLifes that was going in Bushwick, but there used to be a lot of friends of mine that rocked a lot of Polo. But, there was no one to really certified to say there were LoLifes. So, as time went on you know I built with a lot of the founders of the LoLifes, and I felt like I wanted to add on to the culture. So, what I did was I grabbed a friend of mine, shout out to IR salute him. We were the only two really graffiti writers that had a crew that was all based graf that all rocked Polo. Which, I felt like in LoLifes they didn’t really have a lot of. Because there are a lot of Polo crews, but beside them wearing clothes, there’s not really nothing else that they are. With us, we were like even if we stop rocking Polo, we’re still graf writers and b-boys. So like we played a big part in the culture of the sub-culture of Hip-Hop to LoLifes. There’s an event they have every year, it’s the Bushwick Collective, shout out to Joe from Bushwick Collective. They do like an annual block party where a lot of people come from all over to do murals. Sort of like Art Basel in Miami.
JCN: Right, right.
Milk: So, they considered it like the Art Basel of New York during this time. So, for years, me and my crew, which my crew is PPK (Polo Posse Kamikazee, Painting Peoples Korners, and um Polo Posse Kids). My friend, IR my partner, and his crew is PCU (Polo Crushing Unit, Painting Can’t Control Us). So, we were the only two crews that were just like so much into like graf and Polo. So, what I did was the same format of what the founders did. You know they took Marcus Garvey Village and St. John’s Place and they formed LoLifes. So, what I did was the same thing. I took the two biggest graffiti crews in Bushwick and I formed it, and that’s how I ended up, we ended up becoming Bushwick LoLifes.
