Artwork: Jaean-Michel Basquiat, Jack Johnson, 1982 © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, New York 2016.
Brooklyn’s finest Jean-Michel Basquiat first came to fame writing SAMO© on the streets of New York between 1977 and 1980. He came up with the name one day while he and high school friend Al Diaz (BOMB 1) were smoking weed they called “the same old shit.” They shortened to “Same Old,” which easily became “SAMO” and a character was born.
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SAMO© found his way on to the streets, a provocateur with a pithy yet poetic sense of humor. The name would appear alongside aphorisms, multiple-choice questions, or other turns of phrase that mocked the world at large. Anthony Haden-Guest reports in his book True Colors (1998) that Basquiat had told him, “Samo was sophomoric. Same old shit. It was supposed to be a logo like Pepsi.”
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Perhaps this is why it caught on and stood out from the flourishing graff scene that dominated to New York. Basquiat did not participate in the glorious “Wild Style” of the day; no masterpieces of color and line that made heads turn and tongues wag. Instead, he kept to simple, clean block letters and went about his day, dropping bon mots that captured the attention of the Downtown art scene as it was taking shape.
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