//subdivision

OK, my point here was...
I saw the Mario video on music TV a couple of times, and was really amazed at the artwork in the background. After quite a bit of mucking about in Google (OK, OK almost an entire Sunday) I found a few interesting things out. (probably half of it wrong, but hey..)

The Mario video is directed by MrX / Lil' X / Little X, often connected with Hype Williams, and always uses opening/closing black bars at the beginning and end of his videos.

Lil' X is Trinidadian Canadian, who grew up in Ontario, and is often based in Toronto.

You can just make out the 'Zion' tag in one of the shots near the Samurai. Zion is the Owner/Manager of The Bombshelter, a well known graffiti supplies shop (and much more really, definitely a place to check out) in Toronto.

HSA Crew are one of the major graffiti collectives in Toronto, comprising mainly Kane, Skam, Bacon, Roni, and Art Child it seems (loads of other nice work on Flickr)

Their work also features in the Little X Daniel Bedingfield video, and the angel is clearly HSA crew here, so I'm thinking so is the beautiful blue angel in the Mario vid.

It's become a bit of an obsession, if anyone can ID any of the other graffiti in the vids, I'd love to know!

There's a great photo of the Angel "Serve or Suffer" wall here: www.flickr.com/photos/83546210

And a nice angel stencil close up here:
www.flickr.com/photos/wackydoodler/17340839/

Tagged as angel, bombshelter, graffiti, hsa crew, toronto + Categorized as Blog