“Basquiat has absorbed every trick in contemporary painting's book at an astoundingly early age. He's so precocious he's practically old before his time”

“What I missed immediately was the figure of Jean him­self, one of the most beautiful young men — with one of the most original minds — I have ever met”

“He was the most financially suc­cessful Black visual artist in history and — depending on whether you listened to his admirers or detractors — either a genius, an idiot savant, or an overblown, overpriced fraud.”

When a mysterious graffiti tag started appearing around New York, the Voice went looking for the artist behind ‘SAMO’

‘Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder’ can’t help but summon nostalgia for a time when the city was rougher, more raw, its public culture infused with outer-borough grassroots brilliance and improvisational futurism instead of corporate programming