James Brown Tribute Bag

The Godfather of Soul. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. Soul Brother Number One. A few weeks after the passing of music legend James Brown, I decided that I needed to do a tribute bag to the man responsible for changing the course of music in general, as well as inspiring a future generation of hip hop artists across the globe. Due to my regular duties and commitments, the project was spread across a few months' time. Finally, I got back to it and, determined to finish despite other looming projects, I completed the custom graphics late last week. This is the bag as it came out in the end.

The project made me think of all the musicians who we have lost - as well those still making incredible music -that I felt compelled to create a heartfelt, artistic bag for. J Dilla. Herbie Hancock. Madlib. MF Doom. Bob Marley. Miles Davis. The list goes on and on. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I wanted to do a series of bags. So...I'm hereby declaring that I will be making a series of "Musical Tribute" bags. The James Brown one is the first, and is will be available for sale on our website. J Dilla will follow, but will be for my own personal use, as he was my favorite producer ever. The timeframe for these bags to be made is wide open, so I can't really say how frequently I'll be able to release new ones, but my goal is to do roughly 5-6 per year. We'll see how it goes...



A closeup of the bag. I've been really into doing photorealistic artwork using applique technique.



And this is a closeup closeup. Right next to the flap, the stitching and texture are quite evident...but a few feet away, everything blends together really nicely and the graphic looks like a screenprint or photo.