This interview with Next/Nekst doesn't appear in Freights though. He was going to be a feature interview and I had everything in place, but I got a call from him saying not to run it. The Houston Police had shown up at his folks house, and there was major heat. So I pulled the interview.
Since then Nekst has gone on to be one of the most prolific writers in graffiti today. These days his letters are usually readable, in chrome and black and always in high profile spots. He also reps MSK and D-30.
This interview has never been published until now.
I write Next, and I push DTS, Addicts or A2M same difference, and Mayhem.
Why do you write?
I don’t know, cause I’m bored, and I’m not good at talking to people.
What’s your favorite aspect about writing?
I like all of it. I’ve been trying to improve my hands(style) and write on stuff and do fill-in places which I’ve never really been good at. I’m still not good at it, but I’m trying to think about it more. I started out doing spots, like city stuff–just big pieces or simple stuff around the city. Doing freights is where I learned to do better pieces. It still kinda is, but it used to be over-the-top chill at some of the spots we had in Houston, and we didn’t really have any walls. So, we started out trying to do creative pieces on trains. That’s probably a bad thing. There’s probably a whole bunch of experiments that I don’t want anyone to see running around out there right now.
What’s your least favorite aspect about writing?
I don’t have, or want to say I have a least favorite aspect on writing. I may say at this point I think it sucks, but anytime I addimently say something sucks it turns around and becomes my favorite thing in a few months. So, I’m just not going to say that. I don’t want to eat my words later on.
Do you concentrate on trains more than other aspects of graf.?
No. I’ve pretty much pushed it all equally through my life. I go as hard as possible. I’ve always painted my city strongly. I take breaks from the city. I’ll take two or three nights a week and paint trains and maybe two nights and paint the city kind of thing. It’s on different schedules. Each requires different time periods in the night. I can’t stand letting other people get over on me regardless, especially in Houston. It’s been a city that I’ve done a lot in for a while, and it gets under my skin if I see someone doing stuff and I don’t have anything running, and that makes me push it.
Me. I’m the one annoying myself the most about going out and getting stuff done. I’m that annoying guy on your answering machine going, “Hey, what are we doing tonight?! Hey you wanna go paint?! What’s going on?!” Even to my friends out of town, I’m like, “Hey watchya doin’?! Hey I’m gonna come in town, you wanna Paint?!”
So you push people?
I wouldn’t say that. I just push myself. I wouldn’t be painting with them if I had to push them. All the people I paint with are pretty down.
How did you get into writing?
My little brother Vizie started writing when I was a senior in high school. I wasn’t really doing much, and so I just decided I’d start painting. That’s it.
Texas is a huge state, with cities far apart. Are the different scenes at all connected, or is each one doing its own thing?
Yeah, cities are kinda isolated. I’m well connected with people in Austin–we’re all good friends. Other than that, I know jack about people in San Antonio or El Paso. San Antonio has a lot of writers there, I just have never happened to go there. It’s only three hours way, but for some odd reason I’ve never gone there. El Paso is fuckin’ far though, like a fifteen hour drive (within the state). I know a few people in Dallas, but me and that city don’t really get along well. It’s possible to keep well connected here, but I don’t think it’s really important.
Where have you traveled to paint?
I just got back from Australia, and on the way out I went to California for the first time. I went to ‘Frisco for a week, and then to L.A. for just a couple of days on the way back. I haven’t gone to that many places. I feel like I’m always on the road, but really it’s just stupid little trips around here. I’ve gone a little bit to the Mid-West to see a couple of friends. I haven’t been to the East Coast since I was 10 years old, and I’m trying to go to New York to visit some friends in a couple of weeks or so. I’ve been to Seattle a couple of times. I should go down to Mexico; It’s only five hours away. That’s about it.
What was going on in Australia?
The crew that started illegal graffiti in Houston is the crew I’m in DTS(Death ThreatS). They basically got me and my brother into it. These two brothers Jade and Damet, they’re both from Australia and they came over here. There dad got a job here or whatever. The younger brother went back to Australia, and the older brother stayed to go to college here. Jade is my closest partner for city stuff. I just saved money, and wanted to visit. I knew if I went I’d be hooked up, so I went and stayed a couple of months.
In Brisbaine I did a bit of city stuff. Trying to get some stuff that’s permanent there. I was just walking around with silver pens and white out and stuff catching real underground things that people might not notice for a couple of years, hoping for it to run for years. Then I also did some real live spots as well. The rest of the trip was concentrated on city trains (clean trains). We did a couple in Brisbaine, a bunch in Melbourne, and a couple in Sydney as well. Once you start doing that stuff it’s pretty addictive. It just cuts you out of your frame of mind for anything else, so you just focus on it. It has the most fun aspects I’ve ever experienced. You get to be a ninja. You have to be intelligent about your stuff, you have to do your homework and you have to fucking run. But you’re still trying to do something creative and impressive within a short time-frame. You want to do something bright and colorful and interesting letters still. I guess you could do block letters and get over, but since it was a rare occasion, I was trying to get some nice pieces on those things. It just involved everything so well, and it was so entertaining. Then seeing your shit run the next morning is pretty impressive. Especially when there’s a bunch of kids on the station and you see people watch it and there jaws drop. When you do something impressive people notice it.
Typically, how long does a clean train run there?
If you do it in a yard at night, it will usually run through the peek hours the next morning which is six to ten in the morning. Some of our stuff ran a couple of days, some would run all day then get buffed that night, but I would say most got pulled during the dead time in the middle of the (next) day.
Do Australian cities have good, organized vandal squads?
There’s a vandal squad in all those cities, maybe not Sydney. If it is, Sydney is big and it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, because in Sydney there’s so much stuff going on.
So lots of kids hit clean trains there?
Yeah, it’s an active scene. You can go out any morning at 8:00 in Melbourne or Sydney and you’ll see a couple of panels go by. There’s kids that just straight bench every morning. I had to fight for my photos at a couple of points, cause there were so many kids in the station waiting for panels to come through.
Most of their big cities are on the coast line. Do they have freights that run cross country?
They have a freight train system, but you wouldn’t want to be concerned about it like you would be here. It’s not interstate traffic as much. It mostly hangs around the city. But, at the same time the freight lines are the same as the city train lines, and a lot of times freight trains will run through stations. I only did a couple, but with the clean trains there I got into a one track frame-of-mind. I’m glad I did some city stuff first, because once I did those it was over.
Do you have an opinion of quality painted trains vs. strictly going after numbers of trains painted?
I think that regardless of what you do there’s a way to make a dent in trains as long as your putting in the work. If you’re out there doing stuff as nice as possible with good style and the letters are there, then people will notice it just for that. A friend of mine came in from out of the country and did 60 quality freights and they’re getting noticed. You can make an impression that way. At the same time it’s probably a good rule of thumb that you should have a healthy balance, good pieces and a lot of numbers. If you have something everywhere all the time and it’s just crap, it’s gonna get covered. If you’ve got a choppy silver throw on a nice train no one is gonna give a fuck about going over you. Still if you do enough, there going to be out there. Or, you could just streak and eventually it will make a dent.
What’s your opinion on painting over old hobo style streaks?
It doesn’t get under my skin. They would have no problem with streaking right over my stuff on the same section of a panel that they’ve been doing for years upon years. It’s up to you. I try to avoid it if it’s something really neat, but if it’s just someone’s signature I’ll probably go over it. Actually, I probably wouldn’t notice that I had gone over it cause it’s in the dark, and I’m just not thinking about it.
What’s the philosophy behind Addicts crew?
There’s some of us who are strictly into freights, and it bothers them almost to paint anything but freights. There’s some of us that do everything. The only overriding attitude is we don’t right Addicts on anything but freights, and to paint trains. We all really like painting trains, so that’s not even really a big thing.
What are your plans for the future?
Just trying to paint as much as possible before I think it’s stupid or get shot or get crippled or something like that. Hopefully throw school in there at some point and time. This is taking up too much of my time to do school right now. It would be a waste of time and money to try and be in school and paint as much as I like to paint. Hopefully I can some of this out of my system and balance it out, but I don’t know what’s going to happen.
If a young writer came up to you asking for advice on how to do this shit right, what would it be?
I would tell them to stop painting freights.
Is that selfish reasoning?
Yeah, pretty much. I don’t got no ‘truf for the youf.’
Shout outs?
I usually just hit up my brother. I don’t want to leave anyone out. I don’t have a list written down. There’s so many people I owe stuff to, and it would be a long paragraph thing if I did it right.
Any last words?
I’m bad at saying good-bye.
(*I do not own any of the photos in this post. I pulled from various spots, so for no credit cited)
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