A hip-hop walking tour: 'Rap Quotes' street art marks specific city locales mentioned on rap tracks

Jay Shells, a lifelong New Yorker, heard the call and created signs as part of a street art project to identify the spots immortalized in song.

A sign outside the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn where rapper Jay-Z grew up.

 

If you like New York rappers, now you can walk their talk.

 

Take, for example, “On 139 and Lennox Ave. there’s a big park, and if you’re soft don’t go through it when it gets dark,” from rapper Big L’s rhyme on 1995’s “Lifestyles Ov Da Poor and Dangerous.”
 

“New York City is the birthplace of hip-hop and if any place deserve this historical map of sorts, it’s New York,” Jay Shells said about his “Rap Quotes” street art.

 

You can now find that quote on on a sign at that spot, thanks to artist Jay Shells.

(From left) Jay-Z, Nas and Kanye West's lyrics have made quite the impression on artist Jay Shells.

The lifelong New Yorker had his interest sparked by the rapped-about imagery of the dangerous Harlem park. This led to his latest street art project to see and mark different hip-hop locales.

Called “Rap Quotes”, Shells spent last weekend with the website Animal putting quotes on signs at 30 different spots throughout New York City that are mentioned in rap songs — giving the city its first unofficial hip-hop history tour.

The corner of 106th St. and Park Ave., immortalized by rapper Kanye West.
The project isn’t Shells’ first foray in artistic street sign making — he is best known for his street and subway etiquette signs that lay “official” ground rules for city walking and straphanging.

There are so many blocks that get called out in songs but a block can be huge,” Shells told the Daily News this week.

“A corner or venue is a place where you can put a stake in the ground and say, ‘This is mentioned.’ But it’s really specific locations, a place where you could put a brass plaque in the ground and say, ‘This happened here.’”

Not every location is very safe, but Shells said he “would go no matter what.” He said it was interesting to see the changes in places that were described more than 20 years ago or, in some cases, in much more recent songs.
“That’s the reason I did the project, for that feeling for someone that might be walking by, and that person didn’t know that where they’re standing, that particular point, is mentioned in a song,” he said.

“The feeling I got was that it was really cool. These are songs I’ve listened to hundreds of time, but to think this is the corner Guru was rapping about so many times.”

It’s an ongoing enterprise with just a few ground rules. Only one quote per rapper goes up, and the location must be a very specific corner, park or restaurant-venue, not an entire block or neighborhood.


Shells has another nine signs to put up. He has been taking suggestions from friends and strangers online for other lyrics to post.

In a tragic turn, some of those corners have proven just as tough as advertised. In 1999, Lamont Coleman, Big L himself, was gunned down on 139th Street, just down the street from the park that he boasted is too dangerous after dark.

“It’s an homage to New York hip-hop,” Shells said. “New York City is the birthplace of hip-hop and if any place deserve this historical map of sorts, it’s New York.”