Editor-in-Chief Tschabalala Self and Elephant Magazine are proud to present Darold Brown, also known as Ferg.
As born and bred NYC millennials Darold Brown and I share many cultural and visual references. Brown is known to many for his contributions in the music industry but few are aware of his long standing accomplishments in art and design. As an alumni of New York City’s Art and Design High School his pursuits in fashion and object making predate his ambitions as a musical artist. As of late, the art world is taking notice and Brown, more commonly known as Ferg, is reintroducing himself as a multidimensional maker, and more simply, as an artist full stop.
This pivotal moment in Brown’s life and career can be described as an expansion rather than transition. Nothing is being left behind; he’s building onward and upwards, adding layers to an already established foundation. Brown’s works paint a picture of a specific point in time capturing the cinematic quality of Harlem in the 90’s. But, it is not nostalgia in a didactic sense. His paintings and his perspective as an artist are distinctly contemporary in their refusal to fall neatly into any one category. His works, like himself, have a multi-hyphenate quality, leaning into both fashion and design sensibilities. His paintings are lively and incorporate many of his unique lexicon of pop-cultural references. In short, art making is not new to him, but true to him. Elephant Magazine is pleased to present Darold Brown.
TS: How are you doing today?
DB: Great, and yourself?
TS: I’m doing well. How did the shoot go last week?
DB: Oh, it was amazing. It was super magical, everything was alive. The venue was beautiful, the energy –- the questions were dope.
TS: Good. I’m excited to see it all come together.
DB: Yeah, me too.
TS: Ferg, thank you for making time today to speak. I wanted to start by asking you, what name do you prefer to go by now?
DB: Ferg is good. I usually go as Darold Brown when I paint. That’s my artist entity.
TS: So, in your career as a painter, you’ve been going by the name Darold Brown. Correct?
DB: Yup, that’s my government.
TS: Just out of curiosity, what prompted you to pivot from your other artistic name, Ferg, to Darold Brown, now that you’re in the contemporary art space?
DB: Darold Brown is who I am. And, you know, Ferg is also me. But Ferg is more known in the music space. I wanted to give people a different brand when it comes down to the art. I think that’s what titles and names are good for. They come from the same source, but, at the same time, are different experiences.
TS: When you go into the studio, what inspires you the most?
DB: Right now, what’s inspiring me is New York streets, and I think that’s always inspired me, really. I like looking at the construction worker’s marks on the ground, and taking pictures of different distressings that are on the backs of trucks right now.
TS: And how would you describe your works for people who are not yet familiar with your practice?
DB: I would describe my works as artifacts. When I think about painting, I’m always thinking about leaving a story behind for the ones that come, the way that the Egyptians did. We could go into the pyramids and look at the hieroglyphics, and find out a little bit more about their lineage. I think it’s super important that I’m able to tell that story. In a way, I’m making myself immortal by putting myself on canvas, because that’s going to live beyond me.
TS: Do you feel like this is a really pivotal time for you? Do you feel you’re going into a new era in terms of your creative output?
DB: When you say pivotal, what exactly do you mean?
TS: I would say, even as someone on the outside looking in, in years past, when I heard about ‘Ferg’, the first thing that would come to mind is your music, and your celebrity.
But now, when I hear your name I think about your artistic practice – your paintings. For example, a good friend of mine recently purchased a work by you. I see it every time I am at his home. Your identity as a creative is shifting from one realm into another, and even though both are within the creative industry, your brand as a musician seems to be running parallel to a larger narrative.
This moment is pivotal because there is a shift, a rebrand – or in other words a transformation.
DB: I think that I’m just opening up my brand more. It’s kind of like a department store, I just added a department. You know what I’m saying? As I’ve grown and I start to master my different practices, I’ll always be adding on new elements of myself. That’s not to say that I’m moving away from music, or anything like that, my art is just having a moment.
TS: That makes a lot of sense. That leads me to my next question: how would you define yourself currently? As a rapper, a painter, a designer? Or simply, as an artist?
DB: I’m just an artist. I do it all. I do whatever I feel. You know, I might be a chef tomorrow [laughs]. I’m not living in a box, I’ve always been like that. I’ve always made sure, in the beginning of my career, not to be held to any type of rap standard or whatever the case may be, because I had to be free as an artist.
I had to experience different things and experiment. If I didn’t experiment and I wasn’t curious, then I wouldn’t be doing my own videos or directing my own movies or documentaries or painting my album covers or anything like that. So, I’m a millennial, and I come from a school where you had to figure out a lot of things yourself. Sometimes, when things go the opposite way you expected them to, you have to pick up another hat and try things out. I just embrace those things, and it’s leading me to where I’m at now.
TS: When doing some research about you and everything you’ve done over the years, I was thinking about some of your earliest creative pursuits. For example, some of the crystal pendants you sold as a teenager.
DB: Wow.
TS: How long has object making been part of your life?
DB: Oh—I’d have to say with Legos, when I was a kid. As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to have crazy chains like Nigo and Pharrell, and we couldn’t afford that in the hood. You know what I’m saying? I could barely afford to get on the train, so I had to figure out a creative way to express myself.
I went to Harley, the buckle man, who is this amazing belt buckle maker. He made stuff for Lil’ Kim and Ja Rule back in the day. He was in the African Market that’s no longer there. He would make those belt buckles, and I was like, if he can make a belt buckle, he can make a one-dimensional piece—like a plate, that I could put crystals on. Then I went to M&J Trimming, and I got the crystals and a gem glue and the chain. I didn’t even think about business, at first.
The first thing I created was a four-finger ring for my friend Milton, and it turned his fingers green [chuckles]. So we knew we couldn’t put that stuff on our fingers. When I say ‘we’, I had two other friends I was doing the pendants with, Jay West and LA. I went to art school with them and we made all the chains. These chains were so crazy back in the day, that people were actually getting robbed for them.
TS: Wow.
DB: Yeah, that’s how serious it was. They were really good chains. I spent my days silkscreening t-shirts to fund making chain piece pendants. They would go for around six-hundred to like a thousand.
TS: That’s a lot.
DB: It started at three-hundred, then I started calculating my time. I was like, “Do I want to be missing days of the summer for this?” And I had to make it make sense. I was really sitting in the house for hours creating the magic, while I was missing summertime outside with my friends. Then I graduated, and I realized I had to figure out a way to make a passive income. So I started looking into a website, a clothing brand, and different things like that.
TS: So you said before the pendants, you were doing silkscreens? Like silkscreened shirts or apparel?
DB: Yeah, I was doing silk-screened t-shirts. I was working for my dad, rest in peace, who passed away. He did a lot of shirts for the industry, folks in the music industry. He made the Making The Band t-shirts, and I printed some of those. I did some shirts for Loon, Ruff Ryders, and D-Block. I ran into somebody that worked with LL Cool J one time, and I did some t-shirts for him while he was doing his Todd Smith album line. I did an internship at Enyce, Rocawear, and Sean John as well.
TS: Yeah, those are all of the most important street-wear brands from when we were younger.
DB: Yeah.
TS: And, you were doing all of this in high school?
DB: Yup.
TS: Which high school did you go to?
DB: I went to Art and Design High School. My dad also went to that school.
TS: I understand that creativity is something that runs in your bloodline, can you speak a little bit about your father and your family’s influence in your life as a creative? Along with some of your father’s contributions in the art world? I know that he was a famous graphic designer and he created the ‘Bad Boy’ logo, but it would be great to hear more about him, from your own words.
DB: My dad created the Uptown Record’s logo as well, he printed t-shirts for Teddy Riley and his group Guy, he’s done for 50 Cent, Bill Cosby back in the day, and stuff for Charles Rangel. He had a store on 223 W 145th Street where he sold his clothing line “Ferg Apparel” . He also had a restaurant called Heggies on 144th between 7th and 8th, and a game room that was run by it. And he was a big community guy. Not only did he do things for big names, but he did stuff for the community. He put on Easter parties for the kids, and he’d come all dressed up for the Easter egg hunting contest. He would throw small fashion shows, and things like that.
TS: How did growing up in New York City, but specifically growing up in Harlem, inform your worldview? How you defined creativity, fashion, and art? I’m always under the impression that art is just part of everyday life in Harlem. The way people fashion themselves, the flair with which people speak. What is your impression?
DB: Well, Harlem definitely was a big influence on me just because of how we show up. We are a powerful people. We are flamboyant, we wear a lot of colors; Harlem was always colorful. And it’s all about these colors against brown and gray buildings. It’s kinda like Sesame Street, and how the characters are all colorful, and then it’s just this backdrop of brownstones. That’s exactly how Harlem is. As a kid growing up, you look at Cam’ron’s pink Range Rover with a pink mink, and these dudes are lookin’ like characters. You know, cartoons. You lookin’ at a Busta Rhymes music video at home and Busta Rhymes is lookin’ like a cartoon character.
TS: True.
DB: Like all of that stuff, to me as a kid, was like–whoa. Or like Wu-Tang and Method Man with one white eye, the arrow with the hair pick, and the two brushin’ him out from the bus…
TS: [Laughing]
DB: And then RZA with the metal nails, rings, and the gold things… ODB (Ol’ Dirty Bastard) with the glasses with the one lens missin’! And then you had Ghostface Killah with all of the big chains and the long robe with the Swarovski crystals all over it, and like, then you got the Chef that has the Gucci apron on! Like all of these different characters… I’m walkin’ in a cartoon in New York. Definitely had an impact on my imagination.
TS: It’s interesting that you use the word ‘characters’. I use the word ‘characters’ a lot to describe the subjects in my paintings.
DB: Yeah.
TS: I feel like a lot of people don’t really understand that. But I think you have even helped me to clarify that idea of “the character.” This persona that is bigger than life. It’s the way that they move through the world in a performative, yet deeply symbolic state you know what I mean?
DB: Right. And then also, in Harlem, the art…there’s a dude named Sir Shadow that my grandmother used to collect…
TS: Oh! I forgot about him!
DB: Yeah, he’s one of my biggest influences. ‘Cause he was one of the biggest artists I heard of. I’ve heard that he’ll put the pen down on the paper and just draw these jazz musicians or a scene in one stroke. Wow… just the influence of different art, the Renaissance and the history of music.
Harlem is so great when it comes to creativity, we are very competitive. So we’re joking with each other every day if we not lookin’ right. We coming out and gotta provide a lot of energy, you don’t want to look like nobody else.
TS: What is your first memorable experience with an artwork? An artwork that made a psychological and emotional impact on you? I thought it was interesting that we brought upSir Shadow.
DB: Yeah, I actually have to do more research on Sir Shadow ‘cause I just vaguely remember my grandma had a few of his pieces in print. I just always loved it because I hadn’t been seeing anybody else with his style.
One of my most fond memories of art was a music session that my father brought me to when I was a kid. It was with the Lost Boyz, and his friend Claudie B, and he was working on a song that became a hit as well. It was called “Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous”. When I walked into the studio, I saw an art piece, it was an abstract and I was like, “Damn. What’s that?”, and he was like, “That’s art”. And I was like, ” Why does it look like that?” And he was like, “Looks like what?”, and I said, “I can’t tell what it is.” And he was like, “Oh, because you’re supposed to make out what it’s supposed to be. And it’s gonna be whatever you want it to be. Whatever you see.” And that was the first time that I asked about art, the first time he told me about a certain expression of art, which is abstract. I’ve always correlated music with art because that was the first time I experienced the studio, and the first time I’d seen a canvas with art on it, and got an explanation.
TS: That is a really beautiful story. I don’t think there’s a difference between music and art. I think people create a lot of false dichotomies.
DB: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a difference. I will always question some friends and ask them, do you think you could lie within visual art, like painting? For me… You can’t hold back. You can’t hold back within visual art and the medium of painting, you can’t hold back truths, you just can’t.
TS: That’s interesting, so you asked your friends if they think they can lie in a painting?
DB: Yeah. Because at first I didn’t think that you could lie. I thought that painting was the purest form, that it’s all about intentionality. You could be a brainwashed-type artist where you take people’s ideas and you flip them. Or, you can be a different type of artist that digs deep into their roots. You can also be a political artist, but hold back because you’re scared of what that could bring. So yes, you can lie in your art. Lying is possible in painting – you can turn it up, and turn it down.
TS: I feel like when people do that in art, they say that they’re being poetic. Right? So it’s a way for them to say half-truths without them taking accountability for being deceptive. A lot of the time, it’s framed as being poetic in the art space. It’s like taking poetic liberty. I hear people say that a lot when it comes to music.
DB: Well, as long as they don’t feel like they’re lying to themselves.
TS: That’s true, once you do that, that’s when you go crazy.
DB: That’s when you’re selling your soul. You’re doing it for whatever reason you’re doing it for at that point.
TS: Do you believe you can lie in music? And why do you think about lying within your creative practice? Is it because you value sincerity? If so, what does that mean to you?
DB: Yes, you can lie in your music but you can also dream in your music as well. I think sincerity is important in anything anybody does because it’s an extension of you. I like to make foot prints in my work from my different eras, so it’s important for me to be as truthful as possible, even though I have the capability to dream at times.
TS: What are you most excited for next?
DB: I’m excited to just be open to whatever comes.
TS: I feel the same way.
TS: I forgot to ask, which part of Harlem are you from? I read somewhere that you were from Hamilton Heights. Is that true? Sugar Hill area?
DB: I’m not from Sugar Hill area, but I’m from 143rd between Amsterdam and Broadway. So that’s Hamilton, I don’t know if people call that Hamilton Heights I think, is where the brownstones are. That’s like the super beautiful part that my friend DA is from.
TS: Yeah, I know where that is.
DB: Yeah, like, Broadway is the Dominican Republic, basically.
TS: There used to be that one bakery over there on Hamilton Place, Sweet Chef Southern-Style Bakery. They used to always have the pecan and bean pies, right?
DB: Yeah, I think I know which bakery you’re talking about.
TS: Mmhm.
DB: I think it’s between 143rd and 142nd.
TS: Yeah.
DB: Yup. Okay. You know Harlem.
TS: I’m from down the hill, Hamilton Terrace. Right across from the park.
DB: Hello, Harlemite! [laughs] It’s wild we haven’t crossed paths yet.
TS: I know! Not until today.
