Style Wars: Kase 2 & the Need to Create

I’m not sure why I didn’t watch Style Wars sooner.  It’s it a beautiful time capsule of urban imagery, culture, and style. It also illustrates an underlying truth among creative culture that goes back to the beginning of time: Humans like to make stuff. Humans need to make stuff.

Some humans like to make stuff more than other humans like to make stuff, and they are usually the ones that create and influence style. Over time, media change, styles change, and our values around art change. But ultimately we stay the same -- at our core, we are creative beings, and we keep on creating. And I love that.

Of all the great characters in this film, I was immediately drawn to Kase 2. Not just because he and I are left handed (he lost his right arm when he was a kid), but because of the way he talked about art and style. There was something so raw and true in his words that struck a deep chord with me.

“Colors, designs, style, technical advances…cartoons, everything. And when they see you got a vicious style, they be wanting to get loose about it, you know, and that’s what keeps it going.”

Kase 2 is credited with creating the Computer Rock style. He died in 2011, leaving behind a ton of creative work, many imitators, and more than one baffling, yet awesome description of exactly what style is: