“American Royalty” - Illustrations by Sam Spratt commissioned by Childish Gambino
Limited Edition Prints Available: royalty.samspratt.com
So, I’m pretty excited to finally share with you my full project with Actor/Writer/Rapper Donald Glover. What began as cover art for his last mixtape “Royalty” evolved into a series of Rockwell-esque vignettes on Americana meant to highlight the side of hip-hop that tends to take a back seat to “money, cars, and jewelry” – where you come from.
The collection of 10 illustrations cover a wide-spectrum of the little moments – the struggles, the simple pleasures, the risks, the irony, the humor, the hopes, and the realities of the American life that maybe isn’t quite so cookie cutter. For me, this was a rare privilege to both work with an insanely talented person as well as learn an IMMENSE amount in the process of creating scenes completely outside of my bubble. All of these are available as extremely limited edition, signed, numbered, archival art prints at royalty.samspratt.com and a video interview on the project with Complex/Masked Gorilla is here.
A huge thanks to Funfere Koroye, who assisted and modelled for me on “Summer” and “Royalty”From the web site, it looks like there are still a few of the prints available. (Which, given how limited they are, how comparatively affordable they are for what they are, and how gorgeous they are, kind of amazes me.)
I’m very tempted by “Summer”, which is the one I almost ordered when I ordered “Hope”. (Operation Fortunate Salaried Adult Should Support Artists has been in full force this month, as I had some extra I could spend on art and music offered directly through the artists without the middleman, so I ordered one of these and Richard Barone’s 25th Anniversary Cool Blue Halo CD, and yes, having been in the position in my past of trying to figure out if I could afford to spend fifty cents on a doughnut because I was working occasional overnight temp shifts in factories and couldn’t find anything else, I’m well aware of the Fortunate aspect of this and that affordable is relative.)
Anyhow, these are amazing, and should you be fortunate enough to be able to afford a print, you should go for it.
I wonder if my parents would like one of these. It would be so said if I subsequently found out it was not a good choice of Christmas present, way after I’d gone and made a non-refundable purchase. That sure would SUCK/
