NAS: LDN SEASON, WHEN TWO ARTISTS COLLABORATE BY SAL FRECKLES

By Sal Freckles • On Visual Arts

Born and raised in South Lon­don, I have fond memor­ies and a close affil­i­ation with Crys­tal Palace Park. My Dad would often take my broth­er and I there for pic­nics by the con­cert bowl pond when we were young­er, fol­lowed by vis­its to the park zoo, peer­ing through the fences to see the pink flamin­gos and seek­ing out the dino­saur statues. The his­tor­ic­al ele­ments the site of the palace holds were great for my young imagination.…I took my own chil­dren there when they were young­er, we’d have fun mak­ing our way through the maze of hedges plus more pic­nics of course!

I’ve been play­ing in the park again over the past few years — this time jump­ing up to the likes of Red­man, Big Daddy Kane & De La Soul back at the con­cert bowl, plus dis­play­ing my art in the phone­box gal­lery and deliv­er­ing some fun art work­shops for the chil­dren on the stage where even Bob Mar­ley has per­formed and in the fresh new Vis­it­or Centre!

I’m grate­ful to Hazel East & Crys­tal Palace Park Trust for invest­ing in my desire to bring oppor­tun­it­ies for cre­ativ­ity to chil­dren and the community.

Recently the sculp­tured bust of Joseph Pax­ton was moved as part of the Park’s regen­er­a­tion works (the last time it was moved was 1964). From under­neath the plinth it rests on, a Romani­an build­er whose name tran­lastes to Christ­mas in Eng­lish dug up a time cap­sule, con­tain­ing a note and some coins, the note stated that a horse named ‘Santa Claus’ won the Derby in 1964 and the find­er of the cap­sule must back a horse in the Derby whose name could closely be asso­ci­ated with Santa Claus. The team had checked Sat­urday’s race and shared there was a horse named ‘Christ­mas Day’ in the line up, so I waged my ten­ner at 12–1 with a good feel­ing! Low and behold — Christ­mas Day was the winner!

This leads me to say that Crys­tal Palace Park and I are def­in­itely in alignment!

The Roots Pic­nic came to the Park’s Con­cert Bowl this August, with Nas as the head­liner and the Roots as his band, this imme­di­ately sparked an art idea.

In 2024, Amy Cin­na­mon invited me to join forces to cre­ate Ill­mat­ic: The Sea­sons, a col­lab­or­at­ive art series inspired by Nas’s debut album Ill­mat­ic. It was a blend of our styles: Amy digit­ally illus­trated Nas’ por­trait dressed for each sea­son, while I illus­trated the four back­grounds using water­col­our and pen­cil cray­on, they all fea­tured the Queens­bridge North Houses sign, each image reflec­ted the chan­ging seasons.

The idea Amy had was to cre­ate a col­lage of lyr­ics, we decided cherry blos­som signaled spring, sun­flowers shouted sum­mer, fall­ing leaves cap­tured autumn and snow­flakes marked winter. We wove frag­ments of hand­writ­ten Ill­mat­ic lyr­ics into the sea­son­al ele­ments, cre­at­ing a visu­al link between Nas’ words, his envir­on­ment and the chan­ging land­scape. The series cel­eb­rated the album’s 30th anniversary; a nod to its leg­acy and the way it con­tin­ues to shape hip‑hop cul­ture. So, when Nas was announced as the head­liner for the first Lon­don Roots Pic­nic, it felt like the per­fect moment to con­tin­ue the story.

Rather than cre­at­ing anoth­er sea­son­al ver­sion of Nas, I had a very spe­cif­ic set­ting in mind: Nas at The Roots Pic­nic in Crys­tal Palace Park.

I shared the idea with Amy who was straight­away up for it. I sug­ges­ted Nas wear a Crys­tal Palace foot­ball shirt, topped with a cap read­ing South LDN. Amy asked me to design the let­ter­ing for the cap to reflect my style.

For the back­ground, I wanted to pack the scene with Crys­tal Palace Park ref­er­ences and nods to the Roots Pic­nic itself. I drew the con­cert bowl and the sur­round­ing trees, with Questlove and Black Thought lit­er­ally hav­ing a pic­nic on the grass. Around the pond in front of the stage, I added the audi­ence, adding with the icon­ic Crys­tal Palace Park dino­saurs to the crowd, and though it appro­ri­ate to add in LL Cool J as my wish list #1 for future Pic­nics! whilst not for­get­ting the land­mark tele­graph tower at the top of the hill with the beau­ti­ful sun­shine we all needed, draw­ing on my mem­oirs of past gigs, there’s a point the glor­i­ous sun­set rages onto the artists; last year it really helped Big Daddy Kane’s dia­mond encrus­ted suit to Bliiiing!

Once this part of the illus­tra­tion was com­plete, I scanned it and sent it to Amy, who placed her image of Nas in the fore­ground. When we reviewed it, he seemed a little lonely! So I prin­ted the piece, traced his shoulders and drew in a couple of dino­saurs, (Ill­mat­ic­saur­us and Naso­saur­us Rex!) who I cut out, scanned and sent back to Amy to be placed peep­ing over Nas’s shoulders. Amy added them to the image and fine‑tuned Nas’ expres­sion, added shadows and pol­ished the final details just in time for the gig, it gave the art­work a play­ful twist and bal­anced the com­pos­i­tion nicely.

I loved the fin­ished piece so much that I had it prin­ted on a T‑shirt to wear to the event. I also had some post­cards made if any­one wants one, give me a shout!The first Lon­don Roots Pic­nic arrived on a warm, sunny week­end, bring­ing togeth­er artists from both the UK and the US. I’ve seen The Roots and Nas per­form pre­vi­ously, but not togeth­er, there was some­thing spe­cial about hear­ing Nas per­form a bunch of clas­sics with a live band that stayed true to the ori­gin­al sound. He seemed ener­gised and inves­ted in this per­form­ance, with a sense of grate­ful, he clearly enjoyed him­self — the back­ground graph­ic effects were super dope.

One of the things I love about hip‑hop is the way it brings people togeth­er. A music­al sunny day in a park, sur­roun­ded by artists and people from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and back­grounds, is a remind­er of the culture’s power.

For me, there was an extra lay­er of nos­tal­gia where I have util­ised the oppor­tun­ity for artist­ic expres­sion. Crys­tal Palace Park being some­where I spent a lot of my child­hood, hav­ing pic­nics with my Dad and Broth­er by the same pond by the stage that appears in the piece. Return­ing there years later the Roots Pic­nic in full swing, with my illus­tra­tion tied to the space felt meaningful.

Across the week­end, the energy was bril­liant. Black Thought seemed to have an end­less sup­ply of stam­ina on the mic, while Questlove’s facial expres­sions as he kept the rhythm going on those drums made us all laugh, espe­cially toward the end when he turned to the cam­era, his expres­sion said, whew.…we’re almost there… and mouthed the words ‘thank you!’

By the end of the week­end, I was already think­ing about next year. There aren’t many artists left on my per­son­al list, but if Black Thought hap­pens to be read­ing this, my requests would be LL Cool J, Missy Elli­ott, Ludac­ris (for the laughs) and maybe a bit more Raps­ody, with some Little Simz and MC Lyte?

We’ll see in 2027…For now, I’m happy that the Ill­mat­ic: The Sea­sons col­lab­or­a­tion with Amy has grown into some­thing new. What began with four sea­sons and the world of Ill­mat­ic has now found its way into Lon­dons landscape.

Two artists, two styles, one col­lage; and a little bit of Queens­bridge meets South London.…Artist cre­at­ing across the pond!

Watch this space for some Cherry Wine.

 

Fol­low Sal Freckles and Amy Cin­na­mon on IG @Sal_Freckles and @Amycinnamonart

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