Introduction to Pixel Rap Club
The story
90s and the beginning of 2000s were the golden age of Rap music. Born in 1983, I was first introduced to rap music when I was in high school, around 1996. We had cassette tapes back then and the first tape I was given was Onyx “All We Got Iz Us” album. That’s how I first met Onyx.
As a teenager, I spent most of my free time playing 8bit console games, like most of us did back then. Sega, Nintendo, there was also a “Dendy” console, which I think was just a cheaper copy of Nintendo. So the “8bit atmosphere” and “golden age of hip-hop” kinda share the same time frame of my life. Hence the project name — Pixel Rap Club.
For many people music is inspiration, it’s a close friend, it’s like someone who’s always there for you whatever happens, unconditionally. For me, rap music is like the closest soulmate.
I remember back in 1997, I came across with Tupac’s album “All Eyes On Me”. Ever since then, his music became a brother or even a father figure to me.
English is not my native language, and back then I was just learning it, so understanding what is really going on on the record was close to impossible. And there was no internet — so no lyrics to read and follow. But I was really wondering “what’s he saying? It’s gotta be something important”. So I was even more motivated to learn the language.
I remember rewinding the tape like every line to write down Tupac’s lyrics. Well, 90% of what I wrote was total nonsense thanks to the lack of English. The only source for real lyrics were those licensed tapes, with a booklet inside containing all of the information for each track and most of the lyrics. But these were expensive and really rare.
Through Tupac, I met Snoop Dogg, from “2 of America’s Most Wanted”. Then Method Man and Redman from “I Got My Mind Made Up” and so on.
Being a fan of Tupac and being a maximalist teenager, I wasn’t listening to Notorious BIG and Nas back then, since they had that East coast West coast beef when they were alive. And I was kinda on Tupac’s side. Sounds silly now, but back then it felt like being loyal:)
Some older guy from our school brought a Wu-Tang tape. That was something. Nine artists, nine completely different and unique styles all in one group, all in one legendary “Triumph” record. There was nothing comparable to that.
Mostly we were exchanging the tapes between us, teens who were into hip-hop. Just like the video game cartridges. Like, some guy from the neighborhood knows some guy who knows a guy who’s recently been to the United States and brought a rap tape. And he copies the record and the process of sharing starts and finally lands in my hands. This is how I got DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Onyx, Ice-T, etc etc.
First thing after “not-so-safe-for-school” imagery that I looked up when first connected to the internet was rap lyrics. Gotta cherish that moment. I got all Tupac’s lyrics and after some time I memorized like all of them.
Internet was like a gateway to the world of music for me.
In 2001, I performed “Protect Ya Neck” by Wu-Tang Clan with two friends of mine, live on stage at a university event and it was when I decided to write my own lyrics and start a rap group.
Fast forward to 2022, I’m almost 40 years old and I’m creating a unique collection dedicated to those years when rap music was rap music, making a tribute to those great names in Hip-hop history. Carving the legends on blockchain forever.
The tech
I’m a graphic designer and an artist. I mostly draw abstract artworks on paper. I didn’t have previous experience in pixel art, so after a few tutorials on YouTube, I tried myself at creating pixel art in Adobe illustrator (I chose illustrator because it’s vector, therefore — endless quality).
The idea is pretty simple: a square (1000px by 1000px in my case) canvas is divided into tiny squares — pixels and you just paint into them to create the whole image.
Each character and all of the traits are hand drawn pixel by pixel.
Also, I’m not a coder (always been a pain in the ass), so I looked up at YouTube (again) and found this great NFT generator by Hashlips (https://twitter.com/Hashlipsnft). Thanks by the way, so generous of him to share the tech with people like me, who are more artists than coders. And if you don’t know how to generate thousands of combinations for your NFT collection, go to his channel and learn.
The numbers
At first I thought I’d create a base shape for all the characters, create common and rare traits and then just generate the whole collection. But. It didn’t sound authentic to me, since these characters are not just some made up apes or penguins, these are real people and each one of them is unique. So are the traits, the accessories they had and rocked back then. I chose 16 rappers for the first release. It took me about two weeks of pixel crafting, rebuilding the actual looks and fine tuning.
Finally, each rapper will have about a hundred random combinations, having their own individual traits with different rarity plus ONE and only one legendary piece combined by hand.
Project Info
The Pixel Rap Club Vol.1 collection consists of 16 rappers. Total of (TBA) items.
Estimated drop date: TBA (Feb, 2022)
Platform: OpenSea
Blockchain: Ethereum
Whitelist: none
Pre-sale: none
Price for generated NFT’s: TBA
Price for legendary: TBA
Project Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PixelRapClub
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/pixelrapclubv1
Discord: https://discord.gg/QuAREKs9XC
The Club
So, if Golden Age of Rap and 8bit video games relate to you, join my journey! I’m not making crazy promises with a Roadmap, but I am open for discussion, ideas, suggestions and just communication.
Peace.
