Seen vs Seen

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On FaceBook today, I came across a link to a very interesting article on Kilo Sinstars's page that prompted this blog post. As a writer who took pride in benching and flicking all lines this debate/subject has fascinated me for some time. It was a constant debate among my peers back in the day. Who was better or more up or had more style... Big Seen or Lil' Seen. LOL The author captures the spirit of the time in a well written, well analyzed piece. He starts off by informing you this is his opinion and from his experiences and recollection... And while I have no disagreements or criticisms of his recounts, I wanted to add MY personal opinion and experience into the mix, not only as a validation of his conclusions but also to build upon it.

SEEN V.S SEEN a Historical comparison

I was there for the 2 Seen era... Megadriel's blog post was pretty spot on in my opinion. The only thing I would really add is that Seen TC5 made a couple of very big mistakes in his writing career, not actual mistakes, but mistakes that diminished the impact of his legacy in mainstream America and non 80's NYC writers. 1st he did not make himself known enough in Style Wars. There are thousands of people that have "seen" that movie, excuse the pun, and never knew he was in there even though he has quite a lot of screen time in it. 2nd... He did not use only one name. He used dozens of names and dozens of styles which made recognizing his brand far more difficult than Richie's brand. Lastly, he needed to do more top to bottoms and make more of his work cleaner. He had a lot of pieces that were heavy on style with crazy fills... But very often his execution was not up to par with the genius of his artistic vision. Had he not written Seen, this would not even be an issue... But when competing for a name with a perfectionist... It matters.

Seen UA had 3 distinct advantages over Seen TC5... 1st, he was THE star of Style Wars. 2nd, he was THE star of Subway Art. 3rd, the man almost NEVER executed a flawed piece. His work was sign painter meets graffiti writer EVERY TIME. He didn't have near the style of Seen TC5 (who was a style master) and he didn't destroy insides even close to Rupert, but he made up for it with beauty and volume and size. Richie made himself into a brand.

As an inside bomber and a style enthusiast I have to give the crown to Seen TC5... But in terms of impact I have to give it to Seen UA with his commercial style and how he built a mainstream brand. I did a piece with Cope2, Cav, Dero and Chase UA back in the early 90s and I got into a debate with Chase about Seen UA (who he was obviously biased toward) about how much style Richie had... And I think I described it perfectly... Richie was no style master but if I put a yardstick up to a Seen UA piece and they didn't match up I would question the yardstick before Richie's lines/letters. That is how perfect his execution was.



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