Culture Surfing: How Mister Cartoon and Estevan Oriol Became LA Originals
“If you ain’t get tatted by Cartoon, you ain’t got no tat! If you ain’t get shot by Estevan, you got a weak photographer!!!”
— Snoop Dogg
Every time I opened Netflix Snoop Dogg would yell at me about my lack of tats and my sub par photographer. I had no choice, it was one of those auto-play previews. You know, the ones that make you scramble, frantically, for the volume button so you can turn it down, then you spend twenty minutes dancing your cursor around thumbnails so you don’t have to hear the first three seconds of the trailer for every show in Netflix’s catalog. Trying to find a show on Netflix is like walking through a haunted house, zombies jumping out from behind corners yelling, “How about a docuseries??!!!” before firing up their blade-less chainsaw — vrrrrrumm vrrrm vrrrraaaaaaaaang.
This went on for about a week until the three second clip of Snoop Dogg aggressively endorsing his tattoo artist and photographer broke me. I felt like to not watch the doc would have been a personal affront to the DoggFather. As a hip hop fan and someone who’s curious about entertainment culture more broadly, I knew I was going to watch the documentary anyway. So did Netflix.
As it turns out, Snoop’s praise of his tattooer, Mister Cartoon, and his photographer, Estevan Oriol, was emblematic of their unorthodox ascent into rap’s upper crust, a rise that was fueled as much by their proximity to stardom as their undeniable talent. By the turn of the century Cartoon and Estevan were on their way to becoming celebrity artists in their own right, and they had already become LA originals.
By the year 2000, hip hop had become a behemoth. It was reaching as many people, and making as much money, as any genre of popular music. A&Rs, media executives and marketers were scrambling to harness hip hop and translate it into more and more dollars, but they hadn’t yet managed to pull it completely from its roots and scrub it of its grittiness. This era of rap–when its cultural impact was worldwide yet its roots were still attached–was the zenith of the hip hop wave.
Many fortunes have been made, and continue to be made, on the back of hip hop’s cultural influence. But its influence in 2020 is scattered and siloed in comparison to 2000. With every song ever made (ever!) available at the tap of a screen, our consumption of music has migrated away from radio’s relative monoculture and become an individualized experience. But in 2000 the general public (i.e. those not inclined to scrape the internet for sketchy torrents of non commercial albums) was still at the mercy of the radio, the top forty and our local department store’s electronics section. What was bequeathed to us by the powers that be was what we got, and in 2000 they were giving us a whole lot of rap.
This cultural tidal wave made rappers rich, record executives even more so. Agents and managers got their slice. Two east LA chicanos meanwhile, managed to take an unorthodox route into hip hop’s hierarchy. Mister Cartoon and Estevan Oriol, a tattoo artist and photographer respectively, leveraged their art and their social maneuverability to create commercially viable artistic careers that redefined the visual language of rap. Their studio, SA Studios, became a hip hop art mecca and they became its rulers.
Cartoon tattooed a who’s-who of hip hop elites including Eminem, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and Nas. On global mega tours he would be the resident tattoo artist, sometimes tattooing guys backstage within earshot of a stadium of unhinged teenagers. Cartoon’s name became a brand, he became the guy that famous rappers, singers, everyone, got their tattoos from.
Estevan caught it all on camera–the tattoos, the concerts, the madness of tour–and showed it to the world in the form of magazine covers, album covers and music videos. He was the first to capture the LA hand symbol on camera, LA’s equivalent of the “I ♥️ NY” logo. He would quickly develop a portfolio with photos of everyone from Blink 182 to Kim Kardashian.
This is what the hip hop wave allowed: creatives of all walks to contribute to a movement and at the end of the day take home a livable income. More than that, it allowed for the redefinition of the sensory experience offered by the music culture at large. If you had skills and the gumption to keep showing up and shaking the right hands you could inspire a Japanese subculture of low riders, hydraulics, bandanas, tattoos and shaved heads, for instance.
It took undeniable creativity, hustle and social grace to ride the hip hop wave as deftly as Cartoon and Estevan did. Amongst the chaos of the rap mega machine, they were able to tap into a kind of flow. A zen-like state, a silent sphere of hyperaware stillness within which the only noises that could be heard were the thrrraaaaannnnng of the tattoo gun and the occasional chickuh of the camera.
For big wave surfers, flow manifests as an intense focus that allows for utter calm and catlike maneuverability at the same time. It’s through flow that big wave surfers shoot out the ends of tsunami-esque tubes of water without getting thrashed. Cartoon and Estevan tapped into a similar state, only their wave didn’t break over the course of 25 seconds, but over the course of 25 years, and by the time it did they’d parlayed their proximity to fame into lucrative artistic careers and did more to define the visual aesthetic of west coast hip hop than any other two people.
The hip hop wave hit shore the same way any wave does–at least the part of it that highlighted low riders, gang symbolism and LA chicano culture. By the late 00’s the fingerprints of commercialism had smudged out much of rap’s rawness. As an art form, rap simply changed. The financial crash of 2008 made things hard for artists all over, and pretty soon Cartoon and Estevan were left in that awkward space between relevance and nostalgia.
From somewhere high on a rooftop in east LA, you can see the high water mark, the place where the hip hop wave finally broke and rolled back.
LA Originals is a melancholy documentary at its core. A story of two artists who struck it rich only to be left behind by the game that they helped create. Stripped of their clout, they’re left to monetize their past and search for new ways to make an impact in a culture that’s slowly drifted out of touch with them.
I’m encouraged though, by the fact that their crafts won’t abandon them. Hip hop and its visual gestalt may have long since splintered into various shades of pop, trap mumblings and country collaborations, but Cartoon can always sit down at a pad and draw and Estevan can always load up his camera and shoot. And if they position themselves right, another wave might roll in and break their way.
