Hailing from Wellington, New Zealand, Mayonaize is an artist who predominantly creates in the world of graffiti and tattooing. Known worldwide for his calligraphy-styled art on any canvas, Mayonaize explains the importance of blending passion in your profession. “Your hobbies should be enjoyable," he adds of his art, "So, for me, creating is like a motor function. My joints, my muscles, my ligaments, they all move a certain angle and when I hit that angle it's really satisfying. So a lot of what I do is just because it is satisfying for me to do it. Basically, I'm always searching for the perfect brushstroke basically.”

This passion that stems from expressing your truest form is one of the many common characteristics between Mayonaize and Public Enemy and served as the basis for this collaboration. To celebrate the collaboration amongst cultural legends, we sat down with Mayonaize to talk about all things tattooing, the collection and, of course, the impact of Public Enemy.

How did you develop your own unique style?

I've been tattooing for 20 years and I haven't always been doing my exact style. Since tattooing can be stressful, I thought it would be good to do something else in the art world as an outlet. So I got into graffiti. It all started when I saw a video called “Style Wars”, which is about the birth of graffiti in New York and it inspired me to go and start painting graffiti myself. That’s when I began tagging, which is what forged my calligraphy style in tattooing.

What changes in your creative process from tattooing to painting to tagging?

Not a lot. To me, it’s the same thing. When tagging, I always look around. For example, f I'm going to paint a building, I look at the buildings around it. It’s a very similar process to tattooing. If I'm going to do a tattoo, I look at the shape of the body and I try and fit it with the shape of the body. I’m really lucky actually, I don't have to think too much about details because it’s a shared formula that I use. I just look at something and I can tell the best composition for it.

What changes in your creative process from tattooing to painting to tagging?

Not a lot. To me, it’s the same thing. When tagging, I always look around. For example, f I'm going to paint a building, I look at the buildings around it. It’s a very similar process to tattooing. If I'm going to do a tattoo, I look at the shape of the body and I try and fit it with the shape of the body. I’m really lucky actually, I don't have to think too much about details because it’s a shared formula that I use. I just look at something and I can tell the best composition for it.

What excites you about your collaboration with Public Enemy?

Stan from Macbeth has been awesome to work with, he gave me a lot of creative freedom. I think you always work best with people that give you a lot of space to do what you want to do. If you start by getting boxed in, your ideas will be watered you don't really get the full effect of your creation.

What kind of creative risks did you take in this collaboration?

The one real risk for this particular project was mixing the whites and the gold. I also used a color called "black gold". Originally I was going to use black on black for the actual public enemy figure. However, the black-on-black didn't have enough pop off the canvas. I wanted it to be subtle for the print so that if you look at the garment straight-on, it would be more silhouette-y, and if you caught some light on it, would help to pop the details in the lettering inside.

That's a very cool, specific detail. In what other ways, whether it was the collaboration process or the technicalities, made this collab different from others that you've been involved with?

It’s the level of people that I'm collaborating with. This is upper level – you don't get many groups like Public Enemy. I think I had a choice of three groups which I gravitated towards but ultimately went with Public Enemy because they were one of the first acts that I ever listened to. Plus, I knew that I could do something good with their logo. It's circular and my stuff leans towards a circular appearance as well.

So on a personal level, what does it mean for you to be able to collaborate with an iconic group like Public Enemy?

I used to listen to their albums when I was a child on the bus with my big, fluffy headphones and my Walkman. I remember everything about that experience, the album, the artwork. I used to be into copying logos when I was a kid and would recreate the Public Enemy one often. So obviously, getting to collaborate with world-famous individuals who pioneered rap was really special. I collaborated with other brands, but never with a cool group that I would listen to.

What sort of commonalities between you and Public Enemy do you think are present that allowed this collab to be so effortless and successful?

Honestly, I always look at my work like I'm mixing a beat. So I get some words and then I have to arrange those words on a surface to make it look attractive. That’s what Public Enemy does too. They take the English language and arrange those words in a way that made people gravitate toward what they created. There's a real similarity between all artists there.