A creative studio…for LEGO art? Sign us up!
According to Because of Them We Can (BOTWC), Most Incredible was created by Syreeta Gates and Randall Wilson to be a studio “aimed at celebrating and commemorating the artists and moments that continue to elevate and define hip-hop culture — through LEGO.”
Wilson, a front-end developer, and avid LEGO enthusiast, and Gates, a hip-hop activist and founder of The Gates Preserve — a multimedia company that focuses on the preservation of hip-hop through innovative experiences — have joined forces to create some masterpieces that display their love for LEGO and hip-hop culture.
Gates, as a New York native, draws her inspiration from creatives who shaped hip-hop culture from films like “Belly”– which was filmed in her Queens neighborhood –and legendary stylist Misa Hylton.
On the other hand, Wilson’s experience was similar having grown up in Atlanta and developing his love of hip-hop through groups like Organized Noize and labels like So So Def.
According to BOTWC, at the first Black-owned creative studio for LEGO art, they fuse their experiences to highlight influential insignias, milestones, and other hip-hop cultural moments via LEGO art.
View this post on Instagram
“A few years ago I started building the LEGO architecture collection sets and as I’ve built every set that they had available, I started to ponder about the sets that I would love to build that didn’t exist,” Gates explains to BOTWC. “Eventually, I began to think about the necessity of a fusion between hip-hop and LEGO. Because I didn’t do anything in silos, my friend connected me with Randall who knows the culture and has been a LEGO head for 30 years. He got the vision and we joined forces and created Most Incredible.”
The New York/Chicago-based studio is responsible for a variety of innovative LEGO Art pieces including art inspired by N.W.A, Run DMC, and A Tribe Called Quest. Currently, they offer the “Ornamixtape, vol. 1” — a package of hip-hop-inspired Christmas ornaments that features a lego motherland piece, a mic, a DJ set, and a lego snowman modeled after rapper Young Jeezy’s snowman logo.
“I’ve been an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) for years and build my own stuff all the time,” shares Wilson. “I was actually working on creating a model for the Smooth Criminal music video when Syreeta came to talk to me so my mind was already in that mode of building musically inspired LEGO art. I thought it’d be a great challenge to explore the concept and pull out motifs and imagery from hip-hop and build them with a toy that’s universally recognizable — adding yet another texture to the culture.”
As a dynamic duo, Gates and Wilson, continue to reimagine the world of LEGO by creating pieces that resonate with the culture.
To support Most Incredible, click here.