This was easily one of my favorite collaborations to date, but let’s rewind this tape so I can take you back in time to when I fist met DJ Skeme Richards, aka The Nostalgia King.
THE ORIGIN
It was March 3rd, 2012, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Element One was hosting Master The Art 9, a dance competition for breakers (bboys/bgirls) and poppers. I had been breaking for roughly over 5 years, and was planning on competing by myself after my crew was unable to make it for various reasons. I had also been making anime themed remixes for breakers under the moniker DJ RX-78, an homage to anime series Mobile Suit Gundam.
Within breaking at that time, there were a number of notable DJs, but the one coming to MTA 9 that caught my attention was none other than Skeme Richards.
Back in 2009, Skeme was interviewed in a feature for the 2009 UK B-Boy Championships, where he broke down the importance of how the DJ is not only the backbone of breaking battles, but the backbone of Hip Hop. During this video, Skeme was shown to be digging through a selection of records at a Big City Records in New York. At a specific point, Skeme ended up pulling out a record, but it wasn’t just any record.
Skeme Richards, in 2009, pulled out the original Mobile Suit Gundam soundtrack LP.
I still remember it vividly in my mind, walking towards the Rogel Ballroom inside the Michigan Union, and seeing Skeme in front of the stage where they were setting up the turntables and speakers. I approached him, introduced myself, and exchanged various pleasantries until I shifted gears to get serious. For years I had that image of Skeme pulling out the Gundam LP burned into my memory, making me incredibly jealous that of all the records he could have pulled out, it was that one he did it with. Being face to face with Skeme, I finally got to call him out on it.
Skeme laughed, and told me I was the first person to ever bring that up to him. We’ve been friends ever since.
TAVA TAVA RARE
It was around mid-August (2024) when I got a message from Skeme that he was working on a new mixtape, and wanted to see if I would be up for making the cover art and design the packaging. The tape was going to be collaboration with the Italian record label Tava Tava Rare, known for putting out soundtracks from Japanese anime series and exploitation films.
I didn’t hesitate to jump on board and get the ball rolling.
One of the first things I decided on from the get go was that every piece of art for this tape had to be made by hand, and not created digitally. I had already been fighting to help protect the rights of artists from predatory tech companies who were exploiting artwork online for their own personal gain, so for me, this had to be done by hand so I could always have the proof to show this work actually existed. Additionally, it was my way to also create a piece of art that Skeme could hang up in his home.
The second was that the artwork hard to be all original. Even if the music was coming from existing TV shows and movies, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to created a brand new world with Skeme at the center as the main character. This way I wouldn’t have to worry about any rights issues, and could be free to create a world from scratch with enthusiasm that full captured the themes of this tape. The general story was going to be that Skeme was an anti-hero who would fight against an evil organization hellbent on taking over the world.
For the cover art, I drew inspiration from various mangaka Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Go Nagai, along with themes and characters from 70s anime series and the Japanese exploitation film genre of Pinky Violence. The piece itself was pieced together from sketches I made in my sketchbook, constantly doing test printings to make sure everything looked good at the intended tape scale. Along with this, I made a brand new logo for Tava Tava Rare, but in Japanese that read タバタバレア (Taba Taba Rea). After I had what I needed for a design, I projected onto a piece of 11”x 17” illustration board so I could do the final version as a painting. Shoutout to my cousin-in-law Mallory for lending me their projector. I painting all of the line art first with acrylic paint, then used acrylic washes. After scanning it into my computer, I made some final edits digitally before framing the painting to send to Skeme.
The front flap of the j-card featured artwork of The Nostalgia King giant-robo, piloted by Skeme, punching the head of the evil organization, The Demon King. The piece was done in black and white, and homage to manga. The piece was originally sketched on one of my j-caed mockups which I then fleshed out in my sketchbook, then did a blue line inking of on bristol board. My tools of choice with pen nibs and brushes to ink.
The inside cover is where things got extra fun for me because I wanted to use this space to exercise my skills with comics by making a manga strip. One particular manga that was a huge inspiration for me on this was Golgo 13, and helped me find the tone of what I wanted for the story. A minion of this evil organization tried to spy on Skeme by breaking into his place and rummaging, but ends up getting taken out by Skeme. The concept was initially fleshed out in my sketchbook again, then transferred over to bristol board for the final piece. Something I did special for this piece was to use a limited color palette of black, white, and process red, which was a common part of manga publishing for decades. Special shoutouts to Japan Book Hunter and DJ Umeda aka Jaymonk for helping with getting the correct spelling for the Japanese text featured in the manga strip.
Lastly, aside from the spines of the tape, was the interior j-card flap where I had pinup of a Japanese woman featured. I wanted to be sure that this tape captured all the elements of what was going to be featured musically on the tape, so it felt fitting to include a sexy pinup to homage the Pinky Violence Japanese exploitation films. I had fun figuring out how to find a good balance of sexy and serious, making sure the woman has a presence that made her feel powerful. Also got a chance to take a second swing at doing the Tava Tava Rare logo, but this time with a brush instead of precise line work. The final piece was also done on bristol board, but this was done all with colored marker, with minimal black ink.
Once everything was assembled, I sent Skeme the final file to send to the prints. That said, however, my job wasn’t done yet.
There was still the matter of promoting the tape’s release. This is where things got a little extra crazy because it was just a little over a week before Skeme was going to make the announcement that the tape was dropping on April 4th. With less than a week to work, I ended up putting pedal to the metal to finish the video over the weekend. After my mom dropped off two CRT-TVs, shout out mom (one of those TVs was heavy), I got the ball rolling. Keeping with the theme of the tape, I made a limited animated trailer that was meant to feel like lost trailer for a 70s anime. The initial work was done on the computer, but the final video was recorded onto a VHS tape and then recorded back to a digital format for social media.
Skeme Richards Digs Tava Tava Rare dropped on April 4th, 2025, and sold out in less than 24 hours.
After the tape had released, Skeme and I were invited on as guests to be interviewed on Power To The Panel with Bryan Moss. It was a great chance to talk shop about the tape, the process, and so much more.
HUGE thank you again to Skeme Richards for giving me this opportunity to collaborate on a one of a kind project. Special shoutouts to Japan Book Hunter, DJ Umeda aka Jaymonk, Mallory, and my mom.
