Charlie Ahearn (director)
Encyclopedia
Charlie Ahearn was born in 1951 in Binghamton, New York, and is a film director
and creative cultural artist currently living in New York City
. Although predominantly involved in film and video production, he is also known for his work as an author, freelance writer, and radio host. He is married to painter Jane Dickson.
in 1973 to attend the Whitney Museum of American Art Studio Program. Later he was joined by his twin brother, John, and they became part of the artists' group Colab
- short for Collaborative Projects - which was a group determined to go beyond the traditional art
world and galleries, and find a way to "be creative in a larger sense".
For several years during the 1970s Ahearn, then living in downtown Manhattan, concentrated on making 16-millimetre art films. In 1977 he went to the Alfred E. Smith Projects in the Lower East Side to film local youths practice martial arts with his Super 8 camera, which exposed him to hip-hop. Whilst there he saw murals by graffiti artist George "Lee" Quinones and started filming them alongside the local kids who were break-dancing This was something that was to influence his artistic output in the following years.
At this point, Ahearn was approached by some of these local youths who wanted to make a martial arts film, and Ahearn agreed despite never having attended film school and not knowing how to make a feature length film. Being inspired by some of his favourite kung fu films such as 36 Chambers, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, and Five Deadly Venoms
- as well as the films of Bruce Lee
- he wrote, directed and produced the film titled The Deadly Art of Survival. The film was made during 1978-1979 in Super 8 format and featured Nathan Ingram, a martial arts instructor who lived in the Lower East Side, and had struggled to teach the local youths discipline and self-respect and establish a martial arts school of the same name as the film.
Ahearn showed the film in an abandoned massage parlour that Colab
had taken over on the corner of 7th Avenue and 41st Street in the then rather shady Times Square
area (where Ahearn also lived on 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, from 1981 to 1993). CoLab's art show - titled The Times Square Show - had a strong street orientation and included all kinds of street art (including graffiti). The show introduced artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat
, Kenny Scharf
and Keith Haring
.
, who Ahearn had long-wanted to film and whose murals he has always admired. Braithwaite brought Quinones in to meet Ahearn and the three began discussions about creating a hip-hop movie. Soon after the meeting, Braithwaite and Ahearn attended an event in a north Bronx neighbourhood called the Valley, where Busy Bee Starski
, who went on to appear in several of Ahearn's productions, was performing on stage as an emcee. Ahearn approached him asking whether he would be interested in being part of the hip-hop film project - an inquiry to which Starski replied by immediately taking Ahearn on stage and announcing over the PA that they were to began making a film together, thereby making the co-operation publicly known and closing the deal in a manner very typical of the spirit of the Bronx in those days.
As a result, in the summer of 1980 Ahearn began working with Braithwaite and Quinones on what was later to be a classic hip-hop feature-length film by the name of Wild Style
, taking its name from the graffiti-painting style of the same name: a style that is very symbolically described as an "energetic interlocking construction of letters with arrows and others that signify movement and direction". Ahearn wrote, directed and produced the film, wanting to go beyond fiction and documentaries and make a film that showed real people doing real things, as well as portraying the visual explosion seen in New York at the time in the shape of graffiti that fascinated Ahearn so much Additionally, in light of his creative and natural activist approach to art, Ahearn saw a chance to touch upon more general topics such as the classic conflict between art and commerce.
Wild Style
screened two years later in 1982 and later premièred in 1983 in Times Square, breaking records by selling out at all screenings in the three weeks it played. Quinones took the lead role, and Braithwaite and Lady Pink
had supporting roles. The film also featured prominent hip-hop music, break-dance and graffiti figures as The Cold Crush Brothers
(J.D.L., Grandmaster Caz, Almighty K.G., Easy A.D., DJ Charlie Chase, and DJ Tony Tone), the Fantastic Freaks (Waterbed Kevie Kev, Prince Whipper Whip, Ruby Dee, Dot-a-Rock, Master Rob, DJ Grand Wizard Theodore), Zephyr
, Dondi, Futura 2000
, Grand Mixer DXT
, Rock Steady Crew
(Frosty Freeze, Prince Ken Swift, Take One, Mr. Freeze, Crazy Legs), Rammellzee
, Shockdell, Double Trouble (Rodney Cee, K.K. Rockwell, DJ Stevie Steve), Busy Bee Starski
, DJ AJ, and Grandmaster Flash
, although part of his scenes featuring his Furious Five crew has to be cut out of the released version because of technical reasons.
The highly successful soundtrack of the film, which was composed entirely from scratch to avoid rights clearances, was produced by Fred Braithwaite, in collaboration with Chris Stein of chart-topping rock act Blondie
. Grandmaster Theodore mixed the album and Grandmaster Caz wrote the lyrics.
Wild Style and its soundtrack have since been regarded as the most accurate portrait of hip-hop culture and was even named as the definitive hip-hop film. Its popularity quickly spread to even the furthest reaches of the world, as shown by the fact that Ahearn and a select group of around 30 actors and performers from the film and others that didn't appear such as DJ Afrika Islam, were invited to Japan in 1983 to promote both the film and the hip-hop culture in general.
, Tom Otterness
, Ahearn's brother John, Martin Wong
, Jane Dickson and Leon Golub
. Shortly before the turn of the century Ahearn wrote and directed his next feature film, Fear of Fiction, which opened in July 2000.
His most recent works include Cinema Outlaws, a two-person talk with Ahearn and John Waters
at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; Under One Groove, a two-person photo exhibition with Ahearn and Jamel Shabazz ay MU Eindhover, Netherlands; Art in the Age of Hip-Hop; and a two-person talk with Ahearn and Fred Braithwaite at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In the new millennium, Ahearn worked on a series of musical shorts with some of the stars from Wild Style. Bongo Barbershop (8 minutes, 2005) stars Grandmaster Caz in a battle with Balozi Dola
, a Tanzanian emcee. Busy on the Beach (4 minutes, 2006 Produced by Victoria Hart Glavin) features Busy Bee Starski taking the audience on a tour of his Baltimore neighbourhood, nicknames the Beach. Brothers Fantastic (7 minutes, 2007) features Master Rob and Waterbed Kevie Kev from the Fantastic Freaks. These shorts were included on the 25-year anniversary edition Wild Style DVD, released in 2007 from Rhino Entertainment.
Since then, Ahearn also produced the short Busy On The Autobahn (11 minutes, 2008), featuring Busy Bee Starski and Ahearn himself.
director Jim Fricke after comparing Ahearn's old photos with Fricke's old flyers from hip-hop events. They agreed to put a book together where the flyers and photos were put back-to-back with their story. The title of the book was Yes Yes, Y'all, and it was published in 2002 by Da Capo Press as an oral history of the first decade of hip-hop with over 100 photos.
Ahearn's photos have also been exhibited at Jeffery Deitch Gallery in New York City, Monique Meloche in Chicago
, Prosper Tokyo, and the Hospital in London, and well as having been used in the 2004 mini-series And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip-Hop Throughout his career, Ahearn has photographed alongside such famous photographers as Henry Chalfant
, Martha Cooper
and Joe Conzo.
Over the years Ahearn has written articles and appeared as co-author on various topics including art, music and hip-hop for various publishers such as Powerhouse Publishing - which includes the titlesNo Sleep Till Brooklyn, A Time Before Crack, and Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs 1985-2005 - From Here to Fame Publishing - which includes The Hip-Hop Files - and for magazines such as Interview
, Spin
, and Paper
.
To celebrate Wild Style's 25th anniversary, Ahearn also wrote Wild Style: The Sampler, published by Powerhouse Books in 2007, which was full of stories and photos concerning the journey of Wild Style from an independent film about an avant-garde movement to an icon in American culture.
In 2005, Ahearn also hosted a weekly talk-music internet radio show on New York
's Museum of Modern Art's WPS1.org called Yes Yes, Y'all, with guests such as Biz Markie
, Afrika Bambaataa
, Rammellzee
, Grandmaster Caz
, and many more hip-hop icons from 1970 to 1990.
Ahearn was also a professor at Pace University
in New York
City, teaching Hip-Hop, Art and Design, Picturing Art, and also a School of Visual Art class called Street Art.
In 2007, Ahearn was a guest-of-honour at VH1's 4th Annual Hip-Hop Honours TV show in New York
. Other television and film appearances as himself include Just to Get a Rep (2004), Through the Years of Hip-Hop, Vol. 1: Graffiti (2002), SexTV (1 episode, 1999) and Times Square Clean-up (1999).
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and creative cultural artist currently living in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Although predominantly involved in film and video production, he is also known for his work as an author, freelance writer, and radio host. He is married to painter Jane Dickson.
Life and work
Charlie Ahearn came to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1973 to attend the Whitney Museum of American Art Studio Program. Later he was joined by his twin brother, John, and they became part of the artists' group Colab
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. Colab came together as a collective in 1977, and initially received an NEA Workshop Grant through Center for...
- short for Collaborative Projects - which was a group determined to go beyond the traditional art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
world and galleries, and find a way to "be creative in a larger sense".
For several years during the 1970s Ahearn, then living in downtown Manhattan, concentrated on making 16-millimetre art films. In 1977 he went to the Alfred E. Smith Projects in the Lower East Side to film local youths practice martial arts with his Super 8 camera, which exposed him to hip-hop. Whilst there he saw murals by graffiti artist George "Lee" Quinones and started filming them alongside the local kids who were break-dancing This was something that was to influence his artistic output in the following years.
At this point, Ahearn was approached by some of these local youths who wanted to make a martial arts film, and Ahearn agreed despite never having attended film school and not knowing how to make a feature length film. Being inspired by some of his favourite kung fu films such as 36 Chambers, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, and Five Deadly Venoms
Five Deadly Venoms
Five Venoms aka Five Deadly Venoms is a cult 1978 Hong Kong martial arts film directed by Chang Cheh, starring the Venom Mob, and produced by the Shaw Brothers Studio, about five kung-fu fighters with unique animal styles: The Centipede, The Snake, The Scorpion, The Lizard and The Toad...
- as well as the films of Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...
- he wrote, directed and produced the film titled The Deadly Art of Survival. The film was made during 1978-1979 in Super 8 format and featured Nathan Ingram, a martial arts instructor who lived in the Lower East Side, and had struggled to teach the local youths discipline and self-respect and establish a martial arts school of the same name as the film.
Ahearn showed the film in an abandoned massage parlour that Colab
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. Colab came together as a collective in 1977, and initially received an NEA Workshop Grant through Center for...
had taken over on the corner of 7th Avenue and 41st Street in the then rather shady Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
area (where Ahearn also lived on 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, from 1981 to 1993). CoLab's art show - titled The Times Square Show - had a strong street orientation and included all kinds of street art (including graffiti). The show introduced artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...
, Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The artist received his B.F.A in 1980 at the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. Scharf's works consist of popular culture based shows with made up science-related backgrounds...
and Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...
.
Wild Style
At this point Ahearn was approached by graffiti artist Fred Braithwaite, later known as Fab 5 Freddy, who wanted to make a film about hip-hop (as a broad culture encompassing emceeing, DJing, graffiti and break-dancing) and graffiti as an art form. Fred Braithwaite was an acquaintance of Lee QuinonesLee Quinones
George Lee Quiñones is an American artist and actor. He is one of the several artists rising from the New York City Subway graffiti movement....
, who Ahearn had long-wanted to film and whose murals he has always admired. Braithwaite brought Quinones in to meet Ahearn and the three began discussions about creating a hip-hop movie. Soon after the meeting, Braithwaite and Ahearn attended an event in a north Bronx neighbourhood called the Valley, where Busy Bee Starski
Busy Bee Starski
Busy Bee Starski born October 26, 1962, in the Bronx, New York, is an old school hip hop musician, and MC...
, who went on to appear in several of Ahearn's productions, was performing on stage as an emcee. Ahearn approached him asking whether he would be interested in being part of the hip-hop film project - an inquiry to which Starski replied by immediately taking Ahearn on stage and announcing over the PA that they were to began making a film together, thereby making the co-operation publicly known and closing the deal in a manner very typical of the spirit of the Bronx in those days.
As a result, in the summer of 1980 Ahearn began working with Braithwaite and Quinones on what was later to be a classic hip-hop feature-length film by the name of Wild Style
Wild Style
Wild Style is a 1983 hip hop film produced by Charlie Ahearn. Released theatrically in 1983 by First Run Features and later re-released for home video by Rhino Home Video, it is regarded as the first hip hop motion picture...
, taking its name from the graffiti-painting style of the same name: a style that is very symbolically described as an "energetic interlocking construction of letters with arrows and others that signify movement and direction". Ahearn wrote, directed and produced the film, wanting to go beyond fiction and documentaries and make a film that showed real people doing real things, as well as portraying the visual explosion seen in New York at the time in the shape of graffiti that fascinated Ahearn so much Additionally, in light of his creative and natural activist approach to art, Ahearn saw a chance to touch upon more general topics such as the classic conflict between art and commerce.
Wild Style
Wild Style
Wild Style is a 1983 hip hop film produced by Charlie Ahearn. Released theatrically in 1983 by First Run Features and later re-released for home video by Rhino Home Video, it is regarded as the first hip hop motion picture...
screened two years later in 1982 and later premièred in 1983 in Times Square, breaking records by selling out at all screenings in the three weeks it played. Quinones took the lead role, and Braithwaite and Lady Pink
Lady Pink
Lady Pink is a graffiti artist. She was raised in Queens, New York, and started her graffiti writing career in 1979 following the loss of a boyfriend who had been sent to live in Puerto Rico after he had been arrested. She exorcised her grief by tagging her boyfriend's name across the city...
had supporting roles. The film also featured prominent hip-hop music, break-dance and graffiti figures as The Cold Crush Brothers
The Cold Crush Brothers
The Cold Crush Brothers is a hip hop group that formed in 1979 in the Bronx, New York City, New York, alongside other early hip hop acts.-Formation:...
(J.D.L., Grandmaster Caz, Almighty K.G., Easy A.D., DJ Charlie Chase, and DJ Tony Tone), the Fantastic Freaks (Waterbed Kevie Kev, Prince Whipper Whip, Ruby Dee, Dot-a-Rock, Master Rob, DJ Grand Wizard Theodore), Zephyr
Zephyr (graffiti artist)
ZEPHYR, born Andrew Witten, is a graffiti artist, lecturer and author from New York City. He began creating graffiti in 1975 and first signed using the name "Zephyr" in 1977...
, Dondi, Futura 2000
Futura 2000
Futura 2000 is a graffiti artist. He started to paint illegally on New York's subway in the early seventies, working with other artists such as ALI. In the early eighties he showed with Patti Astor at the Fun Gallery, along with Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Hambleton and Kenny Scharf...
, Grand Mixer DXT
Grand Mixer DXT
Grand Mixer DXT is an American turntablist. He was formely known as Grand Mixer D.ST. "D.ST" is a reference to Manhattan, New York City's Delancey Street on the Lower East Side...
, Rock Steady Crew
Rock Steady Crew
Rock Steady Crew is a b-boying crew and hip hop group that was established in the Bronx, New York City in 1977. The group was initially formed by b-boys named Jimmy D and Jojo. In subsequent years, Rock Steady Crew became a franchise name for groups in other locations. The Manhattan branch was...
(Frosty Freeze, Prince Ken Swift, Take One, Mr. Freeze, Crazy Legs), Rammellzee
Rammellzee
Rammellzee was a visual artist, graffiti writer, performance artist, hip hop musician, art theoretician and sculptor from New York.-Life and work:...
, Shockdell, Double Trouble (Rodney Cee, K.K. Rockwell, DJ Stevie Steve), Busy Bee Starski
Busy Bee Starski
Busy Bee Starski born October 26, 1962, in the Bronx, New York, is an old school hip hop musician, and MC...
, DJ AJ, and Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing....
, although part of his scenes featuring his Furious Five crew has to be cut out of the released version because of technical reasons.
The highly successful soundtrack of the film, which was composed entirely from scratch to avoid rights clearances, was produced by Fred Braithwaite, in collaboration with Chris Stein of chart-topping rock act Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
. Grandmaster Theodore mixed the album and Grandmaster Caz wrote the lyrics.
Wild Style and its soundtrack have since been regarded as the most accurate portrait of hip-hop culture and was even named as the definitive hip-hop film. Its popularity quickly spread to even the furthest reaches of the world, as shown by the fact that Ahearn and a select group of around 30 actors and performers from the film and others that didn't appear such as DJ Afrika Islam, were invited to Japan in 1983 to promote both the film and the hip-hop culture in general.
Other film projects
In 1992, Ahearn moved on to other projects, resulting in his video Doin' Time in Times Square, which was shown at the New York Film Festival. He also produced a series of Artist Portrait Videos featuring Kiki SmithKiki Smith
Kiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
, Tom Otterness
Tom Otterness
Tom Otterness is an American sculptor whose works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums in New York---most notably in Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and in the 14th Street/8th Avenue subway station---and other cities around the world...
, Ahearn's brother John, Martin Wong
Martin Wong
Martin Wong was a U.S. painter of the late twentieth century.-Early years:Wong was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Chinatown district of San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968...
, Jane Dickson and Leon Golub
Leon Golub
Leon Golub was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, his BFA and MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949 and 1950, respectively.He was married to and collaborated with the artist Nancy Spero...
. Shortly before the turn of the century Ahearn wrote and directed his next feature film, Fear of Fiction, which opened in July 2000.
His most recent works include Cinema Outlaws, a two-person talk with Ahearn and John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; Under One Groove, a two-person photo exhibition with Ahearn and Jamel Shabazz ay MU Eindhover, Netherlands; Art in the Age of Hip-Hop; and a two-person talk with Ahearn and Fred Braithwaite at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In the new millennium, Ahearn worked on a series of musical shorts with some of the stars from Wild Style. Bongo Barbershop (8 minutes, 2005) stars Grandmaster Caz in a battle with Balozi Dola
Balozi Dola
Balozi Dola, aka Balozi, aka Dolasoul, is a self-proclaimed “socially conscious” hip hop artist from Tanzania.-Early years:Balozi began his career while attending school in Nigeria. Balozi grew up with the support of his family who put education first...
, a Tanzanian emcee. Busy on the Beach (4 minutes, 2006 Produced by Victoria Hart Glavin) features Busy Bee Starski taking the audience on a tour of his Baltimore neighbourhood, nicknames the Beach. Brothers Fantastic (7 minutes, 2007) features Master Rob and Waterbed Kevie Kev from the Fantastic Freaks. These shorts were included on the 25-year anniversary edition Wild Style DVD, released in 2007 from Rhino Entertainment.
Since then, Ahearn also produced the short Busy On The Autobahn (11 minutes, 2008), featuring Busy Bee Starski and Ahearn himself.
Other projects
In 2000, Ahearn went to Seattle to the Experience Music Project to show Wild Style and began a book collaboration with EMPExperience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
director Jim Fricke after comparing Ahearn's old photos with Fricke's old flyers from hip-hop events. They agreed to put a book together where the flyers and photos were put back-to-back with their story. The title of the book was Yes Yes, Y'all, and it was published in 2002 by Da Capo Press as an oral history of the first decade of hip-hop with over 100 photos.
Ahearn's photos have also been exhibited at Jeffery Deitch Gallery in New York City, Monique Meloche in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Prosper Tokyo, and the Hospital in London, and well as having been used in the 2004 mini-series And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip-Hop Throughout his career, Ahearn has photographed alongside such famous photographers as Henry Chalfant
Henry Chalfant
Henry Chalfant is a well known and highly regarded urban culture photographer and videographer most notable for his graffiti and breakdance photography and film...
, Martha Cooper
Martha Cooper
Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland where she picked up photography at the age of three. She graduated from high school at the age of 16, earned an art degree at age 19 from Grinnell College...
and Joe Conzo.
Over the years Ahearn has written articles and appeared as co-author on various topics including art, music and hip-hop for various publishers such as Powerhouse Publishing - which includes the titlesNo Sleep Till Brooklyn, A Time Before Crack, and Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs 1985-2005 - From Here to Fame Publishing - which includes The Hip-Hop Files - and for magazines such as Interview
Interview (magazine)
Interview is an American magazine which has the nickname The Crystal Ball Of Pop. It was founded in late 1969 by artist Andy Warhol. The magazine features intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers...
, Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
, and Paper
Paper (magazine)
Paper magazine is a New York City–based independent magazine covering and discovering cultural movements with a focus on fashion, design, pop-culture, nightlife, music, art and film. The magazine covers trends, new creative talent, urban American lifestyle as well as international lifestyles and...
.
To celebrate Wild Style's 25th anniversary, Ahearn also wrote Wild Style: The Sampler, published by Powerhouse Books in 2007, which was full of stories and photos concerning the journey of Wild Style from an independent film about an avant-garde movement to an icon in American culture.
In 2005, Ahearn also hosted a weekly talk-music internet radio show on New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's Museum of Modern Art's WPS1.org called Yes Yes, Y'all, with guests such as Biz Markie
Biz Markie
Marcel Theo Hall better known by his stage name, Biz Markie, is an American rapper, beatboxer, DJ, comedian, singer, reality television personality, and commercial spokesperson. He is best known for his single "Just a Friend", an American Top 10 hit in 1989...
, Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
, Rammellzee
Rammellzee
Rammellzee was a visual artist, graffiti writer, performance artist, hip hop musician, art theoretician and sculptor from New York.-Life and work:...
, Grandmaster Caz
Grandmaster Caz
Curtis Fisher , better known by his stage name Grandmaster Caz or Cassanova Fly is an American "Old Skool" rapper, MC, and DJ...
, and many more hip-hop icons from 1970 to 1990.
Ahearn was also a professor at Pace University
Pace University
Pace University is an American private, co-educational, and comprehensive multi-campus university in the New York metropolitan area with campuses in New York City and Westchester County, New York.-Programs:...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
City, teaching Hip-Hop, Art and Design, Picturing Art, and also a School of Visual Art class called Street Art.
In 2007, Ahearn was a guest-of-honour at VH1's 4th Annual Hip-Hop Honours TV show in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Other television and film appearances as himself include Just to Get a Rep (2004), Through the Years of Hip-Hop, Vol. 1: Graffiti (2002), SexTV (1 episode, 1999) and Times Square Clean-up (1999).