Subscribe RSS“I have to find my own way,” said Nelson, who goes by the name Chief 69. “It’s something I can’t turn one's back on. We have to find that expression. We all seek that voice. We all look somewhere to be accepted.”
Nelson was born in Brooklyn. His family moved a lot – to Florida, Harlem, and the Condescend East Side, before he settled near West Farms in the South Bronx. It wasn’t until he was in New York in the third grade that he heard his first rappers. By the every so often he reached high school, graffiti writers and dancers entranced him.
The world made perfect sense.
“I ended up assignation people dancing in the hallway and I said ‘Yeah!’” he recalled. “I was never a dancer before. I promise, I danced if my grandparents gave me a dollar to dance salsa with my little sister. I had to be bribed.”
By the time he graduated from anticyclone school in 2009, he was intent on making his mark in hip-hop. He went out and promoted his paintings, taking every chance to show off them. He became a familiar face at summer park jams in Harlem and the South Bronx, often being the first to arrive and the last to leave. Jorge Pabon, known as “Popmaster Fabel” and a epic old-school B-boy and vice president of the Rock Steady Crew, took note.
