Interview with Zulu Williams

Q. Zulu, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about yourself; when you were born, where you were born, something about your parents...

Z. I was born in New York in 1968 and I grew up in Harlem. I'm a native New Yorker. I went to school here, both high school and college. Right after college, I got involved with PNB Nation with a couple of other guys and have been doing it ever since. My father's African American and my mother's Japanese American. They were both in the SNCC organization in the '60's and I believe they met in Mississippi. My mom is from Harlem and my father moved to NY when he was around 16. They got married a few years after that.

Q. Your mom is Japanese American?

Z. Yes. And my father's from Mississippi. I still have family in Mississippi and spread all over-- a large extended family.

Q. How did you become an artist?

Z. I just remember the first time I wanted to be an artist I must have been about three or four. My uncle was drawing. I remember we were both on the bed and he was drawing. And whatever I told him to draw, he could draw. And I remember thinking that that was such a powerful thing, to be able to draw whatever you wanted to. And I think that was my defining moment in terms of what I wanted to be.

Q. You were three?!

Z. Yeah. Three or four. I was pretty young.

Q. So how did you go about fulfilling your dream?

Z. I guess right away. I was drawing a lot. I just knew that I wanted to do something creative for a living. As long as I can remember, that was something I always wanted to do; I wanted to be able to be creative every day.

Q. You started off doing grafitti?

Z. Yeah, I started doing grafitti when I was around 14, 15, in my freshman year in high school. That year was '82, which was -- I always felt it was a real renaissance year in hip hop. Because it was when GrandMaster Flash and Furious 5 dropped a message. It was when movies like Style Wars and Wild Style were made, it was a time when everybody was either breakdancing or into DJing or MCing or writing. So I always felt like that was such an important year. And I was consumed by hip hop, just like all my other peers. So I wanted to write. And I think, for myself, that most writers start for fame. I know when I talk to other writers my age, that's why they started. That's definitely why I started. You want fame. You want to see your name on the trains and all over the city, and you want other people to see it. But it's an interesting kind of fame, because you're anonymous,--but you're famous. In the subculture, people know who Serge is (that's my tag) but if I walked down the street, they wouldn't know who I was. So, that was the initial motivation to write; it was for fame.

Q. Tell me about PNB. How did it evolve?

Z. PNB started in High School. I went to Music and Art; PNB actually started in Art and Design. My partner Brue and his friend Bluster conceived of PNB, which was 'Post No Bills' at a cafeteria lunchroom table. It was basically a collective of friends. They did T Shirts. They handprinted their shirts and sold them to some of their friends. That's when it first started. A little later, I hooked up with Brue in college. We went to the same school--Cooper Union. We hooked up and he was talking about this thing he did in High School and so Brue and I had some ideas for a few shirts. We just started printing them, doing our own production in Cooper Union. We just printed our own shirts and took them around to local stores. We sold them in Soho--stores like Union, which was one of the first stores to buy them. Triple 5 Soul at that time had just opened a store and clothing line and we sold there.

Q. Would you say that PNB has a philosophy or a mission?

Z. Yeah, yeah. We're about statement driven clothing. Making statements. You know, there's a lot of sameness in the market right now. No one is really saying anything in terms of clothing, in terms of fashion. So we're very concept driven. We always try to have some sort of concept and make statements. Not so much with the garments, per se, because they're pretty quiet. But there's a concept about the theme or the direction of the season, let's say. And I try to tell a story with the T shirts and really try to get into the concept. Because the T shirt is like a canvas. There's a front, there's a back, there's a sleeve. You really can say a lot on a T shirt and it's a perfect platform to make a statement. Whereas, with a garment, you don't want to get too crazy with that -- you just want a nice piece. So that's what we try to do. And we're very comfortable with that.

Q. PNB has been in the forefront of defining what hip hop culture is -- fashion wise. Would you agree with that?

Z. I think that when people think of PNB--especially the loyal PNB customer--when they take PNB out of their closet, they're making a statement with that. When they wear it, they're saying something and they're very conscious of that. So yeah, I speak to kids who call the office; they might talk to me for five minutes and just the way they talk to me, the way they talk about the brand and what it means to them, it definitely seems they wear it with a sense of pride. They're very conscious, when they put it on, of what they are trying to say with that.

Q. How do you describe yourself when you meet people? You're Afro Asian. What part of yourself do you identify with?

Z. I describe myself as half Japanese and half Black. I think I identify with being African American and that has something to do with the way I'm perceived. When I say that I'm half Japanese and half Black sometimes people are surprised. They just figure I'm Black I guess or that I'm Latin.

Q. Being an Afro Asian, what has your experience been, designing clothes and being a part of this subculture? What has your personal experience been as someone from a mixed heritage?

Z. I think it's an advantage because it enhances everything we do. It's so rich with different cultures. I think it's very powerful when you can layer something, when you can say things and appeal to different people with the same thing. If you can appeal to different cultures with the same T shirt or message, I think there's something very powerful about that. So I think it's an advantage. Two of my partners are Chinese Jamaican, I'm half Black and Japanese and my other partner's Jewish. So I feel that when we design stuff it's really rich with the layers we bring to it. I think it's a great thing, an advantage that we can speak to all people on different levels.

Q. I think people pick up on that. You also have a big following in Japan...

Z. Right. We have very big following in Japan and always have, from the very beginning. Japan is strange that way.

Q. Why do you think the Japanese are so into this?

Z. The underground is very popular in Japan. When things are oversaturated, or very mass appeal, they're not popular in Japan. It's the opposite here. In Japan, things that are underground or very niche are very cool. Things that are mass appeal are yesterday's news. That's why I think we had our initial success there.

Q. Why do you think the Japanese are so into African American culture?

Z. Hmmm. You know, it's not just the Japanese. Hip hop is taking the world by storm. It's amazing. I travel to Asia a lot, so I can speak about the Japanese thing, but my partner has traveled more to Europe than I have. When he talks about Germany or London or whatever, it's just taking the world by storm. I feel fortunate that I'm part of this generation, to see hip hop from it's infancy to this multi-billion dollar industry. Not just in music, but in fashion as well. But what I love about hip hop in Japan is that I feel the kids really understand the essence of it. They're very learned in terms of the history; I think even more than the kids here are. I mean they really know about the old school; about the pioneers, they know about the founders. And when I say that they understand the essence, well, I was in Osaka and I went to a club and it was midnight. And kids were on the street spinning on their heads -- but not in front of a crowd. there were about ten of them and they were doing that to practice, to get better. And when I left the club about three, they were still outside spinning on their heads. That's understanding the essence; doing that to perfect the craft, to get better. The culture there, the clubs, well, I like the way DJ's spin in Tokyo better than the way DJ's spin here. It's hard to describe. Their knowledge of the music and the culture is crazy and then, on top of that, they're not just imitating hip hop here. They are not just copying what MC's are doing here. I think initially they did. I think in the 80's they were wearing Adidas and Kangols and trying to be the Japanese Run DMC maybe. But now they're forming their own thing.
I was in Japan recently an I met this woman who went to this MC battle. I asked her how it was and she said it was great. She said that depending on where the kids were from, they took th slang or dialect from that part of town and put it into their raps. In Osaka, they're known for their comedy, so the MC's raps from Osaka were really funny. So I think it's great, it's great. Hip hop in Japan is really out of control.

Q.If you turn the tables and look at fashion in America, it seems like a lot of Asian designs and motifs have been incorporated into the latest fashion. What do you think of this?

Z. I think there has always been a fascination with Asian culture, especially within hip hop, from the beginning. Take GrandMaster Flash's name, for instance. GrandMaster Flash got his name from going to 42nd street and seeing kung fu movies with Grandmaster Such and Such or the 7 Grandmasters. So did Grandmaster Kaz. So it was those Shaw brothers kung fu movies that you saw on 42nd Street that influenced the pioneers of hip hop. From the beginning, it's been like that. And in the NBA, you see all the tattoos; a lot of Chinese characters. And in old school fashion, the Chinese collars and mock neck. And of course, the Wu Tang Clan. I think all along there's been this fascination. It's always been connected.

Q. You mentioned before that when you were young, you saw the connection between art and power. How do you see that in relation to what you're doing now?

Z. There's obviously a lot of power in this industry. My partners and I never went to school for business or fashion. But we're entrepeneurs and PNB Nation has really grown, so far. I think it's very powerful to be in the position to be able to hire our friends, to do things we weren't able to 5 or 7 years ago. I talk to a lot of kids, and not to discourage anyone, but it's a lot of hard work. I think my experience has proven that you really can do anything if you have a goal and you set yourself to do it. You can do anything. And it doesn't matter who you are.

Q. It's a big leap from grafitti to owning a business. How did you make the leap? What were the circumstances in your life?

Z. I think what happened is I went from grafitti to college. And in college, I wanted to be a graphic designer. I basically wanted to have a corporate job,wear a suit to work and do a 9 to 5. It's funny when I think about it now, but that's what I wanted to do. Until I got a taste of it in my senior year, doing freelance jobs or temp work. And then, I didn't want to do that. I saw what it was, and it wasn't me. It took me that long to realize it. And at the same time, we had just done the first PNB shirts. So when I graduated, I basically decided that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to do these shirts and that was the only thing that would really make me happy. And of course, the shirts led to the clothing later. Around that time, I remember Stussy, his brand. He's a California surfer, who at that time was really starting to bubble. That was in '90. It was a great time in New York. What was happening in '90, --you had the uptown scene, the kids from 125th Street and the downtown scene, Soho, coming together in the club environment. There were these candybar clubs. They were called Milky Way, Mars, Payday...There were all these clubs named after candybars and that's where the two cultures met in 1990. And it was really popping, really bubbling. And it was the first time that was really happening. So you had all these white people wanting to be cool and all these Black kids coming downtown and hanging out. There was this great kind of energy. At that time, Sean Stussy was really capitalizing on that energy because everybody was wearing his clothes. And his signature, which is just the way he signs his name, looked very grafitti-ish/grafitti-esque. What Stussy was doing, was he was taking Black culture and his things were very Reggae inspired. Hip hop inspired his designs. I felt, here was this white boy from California who was so far removed from our culture, and he's like this authority, he's telling us what this is all about. I felt that if anybody knew the culture, it was me. You know what I mean. So, in a funny way, he inspired me. And because his signature was kind of grafittiesque, I felt, well, this could definitely work. Fast forward to now, I have a lot of respect for Sean Stussy, the utmost respect for Sean Stussy. But he definitely inspired me to think: "I could do this".

Q. You talked about the global impact of hip hop, but there are a lot of people who feel that it's African American culture, and it's being appropriated. How do you feel about that? What do you see is the future of hip hop?

Z. That brings me to the earlier point; which is that when kids don't copy, when you're in Japan and kids are not copying, they're taking it and molding it to their own. That's dope. That's hip hop. They're just starting to do it on a grafitti level, not as well as they've done it on a musical level. But that's what it's all about. If you take it and you just copy it, and you just regurgitate it, well, then, that's exploitation. But that's the beauty of it. Kids are really taking it and they're making it their own. They're molding it into their own thing. When they do that, I think that's hip hop. I don't care where it is. That's real hip hop.