Where I used to live was like two blocks from the mountain. In Chía, there is like a big indigenous culture. We called ourselves Natural Mystic Family because we are all into like reggae, hip-hop vibe, and like the spiritual, weed kind of thing. We started just going crazy in Chía, and we got a lot of legal walls, illegal walls, abando’s, all the bridges, highways, billboards–we were crazy, we kind of took over the city, like, quick. Then I kind of started like a little crew with my friends, named NMF–that stands for “Natural Mystic Family.” My friends who write Nigha, Rasfo, Harmonia, Westone, Pixel, and Arow2 the seven of us, we started NMF. He stopped doing graffiti after he graduated from school, but he did a good amount of work. And I started going out tagging with like a couple other people. He kind of taught me a little bit of hand styles, and like, “Look, you can do like straight letters, bubble letters,” y’know, like the basics. The first guy I remember is Duende, “dwarf” in English. When I was around 8 to 10 I started skating and learned about graffiti through a couple friends who skated with me in the park in the city. I’ve just stuck to that name forever, everybody knows me as Busta there in Chía. And when I was little I was really into the hip-hop clothing, like the big t-shirts, the realllyy big baggy pants with the big chunky shoes, and everybody called me Busta Rimas. When I was growing up, because everybody around me listened to hip-hop, Busta Rhymes–Busta (Spanish pronunciation) Rhymes–was like the main dude. So I grew up doing all that stuff and just, y’know, going to the park, tagging everywhere, and learning about that stuff without knowing what I was doing, just having fun with the people around me. Everybody in my town–it was a little town–but everybody skated, listened to hip-hop, did graffiti. Working class is in the suburbs and the city is mixed between everything. In here it’s like rich people are suburbs, working class in the city. Colombia is kind of the opposite of suburbs in America. The main city is Bogota, and I grew up in a town called Chía an hour away from there. I grew up kind of like in the suburbs of New York, but in Colombia. For themed murals and portraits, he does deep research to ensure that he accurately captures his subject matter, whether the work be the latest in his personal series on threatened indigenous peoples in Colombia, or a commissioned piece he’s doing for a client. His graffiti writing is constantly morphing as he tries to incorporate an infinite variety of fills, lettering styles, and design tricks. Busta has considerable technical ability as a writer and artist. The name stuck, and he carried it with him as he made his way into Bogota to attend art school and eventually to the United States when he immigrated to Philadelphia in order to study and contribute to the city’s storied graffiti history. He and his friends lived and breathed skateboarding and hip-hop culture, and as a young kid he roamed the town in an oversized t-shirt, baggy pants, and chunky shoes, earning him the nickname Busta Rimas, after the legendary New York rapper. Read more about this new temporary series in our announcement post here.īusta grew up in Chía, a working-class suburb of Colombia’s capital city, Bogota. Over the course of this series we will be collecting and sharing the stories of a mix of 20 street artists, graffiti writers, muralists, and public arts leaders all working to shape and create the art in Philadelphia’s public spaces. Welcome to the Streets Dept Oral History Project, a new 20-week series created by Streets Dept’s first-ever intern, Phillip Reid. Post by Streets Dept Contributor, Phillip Reid, photos courtesy of Busta
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