LP - Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some amazing artists, DJs, and collectors.
@orrdesigns AKA Eric Orr is no exception. Humble. Inspiring. Gracious. Not only as an artist, but as a person. Over the years, Eric has accommodated request after request from me without hesitation taking his already unique designs and applying them to control vinyl in ways that pushed their impact, collectibility, and rarity even further. It was a comic made for hip-hop at a time when hip-hop still had to build its own institutions, its own language, its own platforms, and its own visual mythology.
That’s where the
@serato connection became both obvious and powerful. Too many times in American culture, Black, Brown, and Queer communities create underground cultural innovations that reshape the world, only to see those contributions confiscated, co-opted, and monetized without proper acknowledgment or participation. Serato had the opportunity to follow that same corporate blueprint that often separates the community and the culture from the currency. But from my POV Serato didn’t make that mistake. IMO Serato recognized that it had to acknowledge, embrace, and shine a spotlight on the place, the people, and the philosophy of hip-hop that helped create turntablism in order to garner any real “street cred” of its own. Serato may have been a digital DJ company, but its whole Scratch Live, Noise Map and control vinyl universe was built on honoring the physical ritual of analog deejaying and the hip-hop culture that made that ritual sacred.—RA
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#vivaserato
#instagramcracker
#outcomethefreaks
#controlvinylcollector
#hiphop
