During these years, the downtown New York music scene - no wave, hip-hop, disco funk and club culture - shaped Jean-Michel Basquiat as both a musician and an artist. This catalog for a traveling exhibition explores how Basquiat's painting has parallels in his music (sampling, cut-up, rapping), and takes a new look at his production as a writer and a poet in light of his connections with the then-emerging hip-hop culture. This beautifully illustrated exhibition catalog of rarely seen photographs and images sheds new light on Basquiat as a musician, exploring how his art and music are related, and how they reflect on his identity as a Black artist in the United States, the downtown New York music scene, and contemporary culture.