ALI

Marc André Edmonds (December 20, 1956 – April 18, 1994), also known by the graffiti name ALI and as J. Walter Negro, “The Playin’ Brown Rapper” was an American artist and musician. As ALI, he is best known as the founder of 'Soul Artists' and originator of the cult of Zoo York. As "alter-ego" J. Walter Negro (a cynical take-off on the arch-commercialist J. Walter Thompson advertising agency), he is remembered as the lead singer/songwriter of the proto-hip-hop-rap group 'J. Walter Negro and the Loose Jointz', who had some success with their 1981 release "Shoot the Pump". Career Born in Manhattan in 1956 to an African American father, Edgar Overton Edmonds (1926-2002), and part-Iroquois mother, Charyl Jeanne Chevalier (1928-2004), Marc attended public school on the Upper West Side with future noted graffiti artists SAMO (Jean-Michel Basquiat), Futura 2000 (Lenny McGurr), and COCA 82 (Pablo Calogero). He began street-tagging in 1970, and with his younger brother Michael, founded the early crew The Underground (UND). He went on to found the Soul Artists (SA) several years later, and became a respected subway artist well before the advent of “wildstyle” graffiti art. ALI influenced and inspired fellow SA and UND member BILROCK-161 who started The Rolling Thunder Writers in 1976. (RTW went on to become one of the most famed and prolific of all New York City Subway graffiti clubs. with membership including some of the best-known street artists citywide, such as REVOLT, ZEPHYR, MIN-ONE, QUIK, CRUNCH, RICH2, PADE, REGAL 192, BOE, SACH, KEL 139, EL 3, IZ THE WIZ, and HAZE.) ALI's works often contained humorous or cynical political messages, a trend that led to his establishing and publishing the comic-oriented Zoo York Magazine starting in 1979. (The premier issue was first published in May 1979, and subsequent issues were published in the early 1980s.) Tunnel Fire Late one night in the 1970s, while ALI and Futura 2000 were “bombing” IRT traincars in the lay-up tunnel between the 137th and 145th Street stations under Broadway, a number of spray-paint cans, lined up along what was mistaken to be a “dead” third rail, suddenly exploded, enveloping ALI in flames. Futura got him out and to a local hospital, where he was laid up with severe burns. The fire left scars on his neck and jaw-line, but his wrists and hands took the worst damage.