Remix of EPMD album cover “You Gotta Chill” , picturing Fred Hampton talking to Larry Davis, yelling at him,” The Big Payback” which is another EPMD classic. He is issuing an order for Larry to avenge his death. Also referenced at the bottom is the iconography of popular ‘80s street artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
This is a Basquiatesque rendition of one of his more famous images, with the person recharacterized as Larry Davis defending himself within his sister’s apartment. The cops lied and stated that he shot at them first, which was proven false in court. The cops burst into the place shooting, shot Larry first, but the shot only grazed him in the head. Larry then returned fire, as his sister and her kids were still taking cover while this assault is going on.
This shows the confrontation between not only Larry Davis and the police, but the de juro and de facto life for African Americans, the way Larry Davis was portrayed throughout the press and media, and the reality of his defense of his life and family against the institutional corruption of the NYC police. Not sure if Larry was initially coerced into dealing or he was hustling prior to police involvement, but we know that at some point, the cops were arresting primarily black young men (many innocent of any crime) taking the drug stashes from those who were dealing, and then making others sell the drugs for the cops. The cops then pocketed the money and repeated this cycle over and over. Larry at some point refused to sell drugs and then became a liability, and became public enemy number one, a crazed lunatic who killed 4 drug dealers around NYC, and was now trying to assassinate cops.
As details emerged about the police assault on Larry Davis in 1986, it was revealed revealed that as the cops tried to assassinate him, Larry defended himself by approximating the locations of his assassins on the other side of interior walls, and shooting thru the walls to injure his assailants. For many people in the African American community, the described scene reminded them of the “Terminator” movie, when the robot goes into the police station and starts shooting cops through walls, so Davis got the hood monikers’ of “Terman*gger” or “Schwarzan*gger” . The media portrayed him as a unffeling bloodthirsty killer, with no remorse and no regard for human life, a Super Predator maybe?
Also he is calling for a “Connor” but not Sarah Connor, mother of the Resistance in the Future War, but for Bull Connor, the racist Alabama Commissioner who violently attacked black people with dogs and water hoses in the 1960s.
Adapted iconography of legendary street artists Haring and Basquiat, the battle between good vs evil, black vs. white, the people vs. the institutions, street art vs so called legitimate art.