Kit Knows alongside AHR Films bring us this ode to graf and the city we love so dearly. Produced by Giles Monette, and shot by Mark Valino; "The Writing's On The Wall" is a message to the powers that be from an artists stance on one of hip-hop's most colorful elements. Shot throughout the city and the Queen St alleys, this piece is visually amazing, as it is powerful. After the jump, you can find quotes from both Kit Knows and Valino about there experience shooting this piece.

Kit Knows Quote :

Before I got into rapping and making music, graffiti was IT for me. I was at Etobicoke School of the Arts, so as soon as soon as I hit high school, I was surrounded by a visual arts department full of graff geeks. I say geeks, because looking back, that's pretty much what we would do. We literally used to GEEK, so hard, over different writers' hand styles, people's stories, or the sketches we had all just done while we were bored in class. I don't know what it was about that time, but graffiti just seemed to be at such a high level in Toronto. I've talked about this with friends and we all kind of agreed. You had a lot of old vets still getting up, while this new wave of kids had started killing it on a new scale. A couple kids from AU crew (KONER and SENT2- shouts to both) were in my grade. That crew was heavily influential to everyone at school. HFB too. If any of you remember some of the ridiculous rollers they both put up, you'll understand why…Watching the whole HSA crew piece at 416. Classic throws like REN, TRIK, JENSER…That Bathurst station wall with the freshest blue and white RONIE (shouts) and CAUSR throws…that whole Destruction Tour Canada thing EVICT did…. I could go on and on.

Valino Quote :

Ever since I started this raw street performance series I had always had Kit in the back on my mind to do a piece for me. He had also helped out a month earlier with a shoot I did with Zaki Ibrahim and I felt that it would be great to connect with him artisticly finally. So when I caught up with him after the "Little Dragon" show at the Hoxton on his birthday I know the time to do it was now. I like how life works like that.

He sent me the piece he was thinking of and as soon as I read it I was amped. The fact that the theme he wrote about was Graffiti and the situation with the city and graf removal was exactly what I was looking for. I'm very conscious of the graffiti scene in my city.

I love finding new pieces every year by my favourite artists in random hidden places. I even dabbled in tagging and graffiti for a while in my youth. I remember having to steal paint cans from Zellers. They were always random colors with regular caps that I produced some real crude pieces with but I loved it. Kit also writes and Giles Monette runs a mean sticker game so the crew was assembled. The shoot started off rough with us arriving at the first location only to get warnings that security was on it's way and we would get charged for trespassing. This is all part of the game so there was nothing to worry about.