 I was thinking, why isn't there a singular event that covers it all? And it's non-pretentious and it's easy access that you can just come and talk to people and casual, you know, learning things from a different perspective. What's going on everybody? The Fun Bros here. We are in Singapore at Culture Cartel. This is the largest street culture convention in all of Southeast Asia. We're talking about sneakers, streetwear, local brands, designers, toys, tattoos, everything that relates to it. Today we are going to be speaking to different artists, different owners of different booths, and we are going to be asking them one, how is street culture developing in this region? And number two, since so many kids nowadays are wanting to get into the professional arts, what is the best piece of advice they can give to young aspiring artists like yourselves? Guys, there's a lot to find out and there's a lot to unpack. We're at Culture Cartel 2019. Let's go. The first floor of the event had a lot of booths from major brands, from Mercedes to New Balance to Puma and more. For me, the coolest part was having a dunk off with Andrew in front of a crowd and meeting a pro streetball player from the Philippines. Shout out to Hype Streetball from the Philippines. Representing Puma. Oh, he got some fix. Then there's the Food and Performance Hall. Obviously being in Asia but having formerly been a British colony, Singapore has a lot of East meets West fusion foods. There was beef rendang tacos mixing Malay cuisine with Mexican, tamago Japanese egg sandwiches, shabu beef and ahi tuna bagels, and even salted egg yolk mac and cheese. But my favorite food discovery at Culture Cartel Con was the Peepa Gao Boba. Peepa Gao was actually a honey medicine during from Hong Kong. I remember drinking it all the time when my grandparents came over, but I never imagined it tastes so good in a boba. Oh, that's good! I gotta give a shout out to WuBi, Andrew. We're in Singapore discovering and Singapore is not really known for boba. Is that true? No, no, it's not. And this is one of the best bobas I've ever had in my entire life. Pandan gula melaka coconut pandan gula melaka coconut. Ande, ande, ande. Wow, I'll tell you this, that is easily better than the hotel pancakes. Don't sleep on gula melaka. Ande pandan soup-labe pancake with the gula melaka. That is the one. Check this out guys, fresh tamago. Yo, you got bonito flakes, you have Japanese mayo, all on a toasted bread. My mom used to make a sandwich at home. It was an egg sandwich, it was just mayo and egg. This reminds me a lot about it. Cool Malay Mexican fusion. Let's do that. That is good. That thing, that is the best Asian fusion taco I've ever had. Yo, you guys gotta come out to Singapore and see what they're doing out here. It's crazy. That is a liver taco. Malado, I guess, is a sauce and then this is a liver taco. So, that is the best liver I've ever had. Yo, we might have to put the camera on. John's just trying to rendang taco. They didn't taste like liver at all. Meaty, delicious. Can't go wrong with a fried fridge taco. Shout out to this tortilla, this is one of the best tortillas. I thought this was pretty cool that Skechers has like three slushies. Lai Chi, I knew it was Asian. It's really sweet, it's really good. It does taste like lychee, but more like the lychee jellies. This very aesthetic bagel house called Bagel House caught my eye. I'm hungry because I'm looking at all the colors and colors make me hungry. What do you guys call this creation? Love, man. Here at Culture Cartel Con, it's not just street culture, but it's also food culture. Wow. The Yuzu Ahi tuna and it comes together well. Yolk, I think that is the shabu-shabu beef. Yeah? Four and a half out of five. Crazy rap performance going on right now, but the naughty boys, which is a boutique kind of hipster mac and cheese stall, they also do pancakes, had to drop off original spicy and salted egg yolk mac and cheese. Let's start with the original. Wow, look how milky this is. That's pretty good. It's really thick, a little salty. Just try the spicy one, bro. Okay, immediately. I like that one better. Last but not least, Andrew, the salted egg yolk mac and cheese. I like it. It tastes like golden duck as a mac and cheese. What have you seen here at this convention so far? A lot of energy, man. A lot of young kids, all types of sneakers that they're wearing, they're coming in with Yeezy, Jordans, a lot of hunger for wear. Any other market, they just want the product, but in the Asian market, they really care about the artist and the creator, and that's what's really cool about this region. Culture Cartel Con was not just another sneaker event. Obviously, there was a lot of skate, art, tattoos, food, fashion, everything that you just can't learn about during school hours. But of course, guys, we love to talk about sneakers. You gotta be a sneaker head to appreciate the subtlety of the Slam Jam Blazers, Andrew. Class. Yo, these are fire. This is my favorite all-white Air Force One to come out in a really long time. Claude Air Force One, they said that they're done putting the traditional Chinese patterns on sneakers after this. I thought this one actually turned out pretty well. I don't really like a lot of them, man, but this one was cool. It's getting hot in here, there's so much heat. If you guys do not know, and you guys are wondering why there's boost on this Reebok shoe right now, you have to understand that Adidas bought Reebok in 2006. This shoe, the DMX Fury, is like one of the most popular sneakers in Asia. We're talking about the year 2001. Yeah, yeah, way back then. Personally, I don't own a pair, I never have, but I wouldn't be opposed to wearing it with Boost now. You guys are an app. Marketplace for sneakers focused on Asia. And you guys are doing legit checks and all this stuff. We're doing all that stuff to make sure that you don't buy fakes. That's why we're doing the real versus fake comparison right here. Here's why I think the left one is real. I think this tag right here, the DPI is better here, and then this one, I can't even tell what that R is. Usually on the fake pairs, some of the stitching and the cutting is a little bit frayed. Essentially to the untrained eye, you can't tell, but when they cut it on the fake pairs, it's just a little bit more raw and crude. All right, well, you've made your bet. We were thinking, what's the coolest sneaker ever? And we figured, well, why don't we make the coolest sneakers ever made by freezing them in a giant block of ice? They think it different here in Singapore, man. What's so special about your shoe cleaner, man? For our product, right, it's so-called chemical free. So we make use of lemon oil, coconut oil. By using this, okay, with the microfiber towel, it can just simply just wipe it off, okay, without under the sun or running through water. It's a minute in Taiwan product. Hey, this ain't Jason Mark, bro. It's Jason Lin. We have John behind the camera. He's gonna get his Yeezys cleaned real quick. John's played basketball in his Yeezys. He's traveled in his Yeezys. Feeling like a million bucks. Just his left shoe, though. Can you tell him real quick who you are, what you do? Well, I'm an influencer. I kind of meddle a little bit in the fashion industry. Some retail stuff. And I just launched a new Netflix show on Singapore's social, so check it out. Crazy. How would you describe street culture in Singapore? The nice thing about Singapore is that we are kind of a melting pot of all different cultures. We are really young, so we have a lot of things that we are inspired by the outside cultures, like Western and Eastern culture from China or from US. So you kind of see that in style. We kind of mix and match. You see a lot of different kind of variations of style. We are here with Fat Man's scoop hip hop legend. Around for so long, you know, you've seen hip hop develop and organically grow, and now we're in a region where it's almost still in the early stages. How do you see it organically developing here? You're at ground zero. And this is before the big corporations come in and try to take it over. So it's just good to see the culture. All of these cool people together trying to elevate the culture to another level is nothing short of amazing. Yo, what's going on, guys? I'm here with the world famous stash and crash. Sounds good. Yeah, love it. In Singapore, it's going to take a life of its own and go put the basics of what's going to be there. So a tree is a tree, but there's different types of trees. That's how it's built, so you can do anything. When hip hop first started in New York City, it was all about party. Everyone say, oh, everyone have a good time. And then it went through an era where everyone needed to have beef. Everyone wanted to have enemies, and there was a lot of violence and gangster rap was born. And the same thing reflected on the subway trains. And then the subway trains died. Now, it has gone worldwide. And in some countries, you only get the artwork and the dance and the music, and everyone's happy. In Europe, I appreciate artwork so much more. But here, I don't know what the culture is like. So hopefully you guys will only import the good stuff, the fun, the beauty, and not the violence, not the vandalism and not the ugliness that sometimes accompanies this sort of artwork. So, so far, the vibe in this place is just awesome. Hype culture meets foreign culture. Hype non-chicken. Not high non-chicken. Let's just walk us through what you're doing here because you're mixing a lot of, sort of like what, national fast foods. Nothing too serious, nothing too ironic. We just like, we just like to have fun. Indomie migoreng figurines. We see the hype now. And then we got hype non-chicken too, right? Man. This is the roast hype non-chicken and this is the white. Yes, right. Yeah, this show, this is the first time you are seeing it. All right, can you guys explain the thinking behind the hype non-chicken? We were hungry as hell. What to do? This is like, the size, this is he-man size. It will fit in with the old school he-man figures. So we're like, what can we do? What's popular in Singapore? High non-chicken. We're hungry. Then we just started sculpting and this came out. This is really creative and I love this villain section here. It's really funny because it's kind of personifying all these things that are outlawed in Singapore that are not outlawed in many other countries. Professor Gum. All right, we tell us about Chop Chop. Chop Chop is by Diplomat. Diplomat is a group of artists where we do like illustrations and stuff and then on our free time because we have a day job. We make it into stickers. We make it into t-shirts and stuff like this and we try to sell them. Okay, so you guys were doing this piece for Adidas and then this piece for Nike. I just got bought and I wanted to draw some Gundam and then add some skulls because I just like skulls and then we just put it on a t-shirt. So it's kind of like a mash-up, huh? Yeah. All right, we are here with Murphin, an artist from Spain. Yeah, hello, my name is Murphin. What is the inspiration behind your art, man? So, well, what he does is spray paint. I like the acrylic and with the color pencils. So actually in Europe, hyperrealism is not very strong, but in Asia, it will still take some time to come. So what do you think for the kids out there? They want to do what you just did, but for whatever reason, it's not flowing. What's your best piece of advice so they can break through those mental barriers and be like you and make dope art? I mean, I can't give you advice that you don't already know, right? If you know what you want to do, then do it. Then do it. We did it. It's not all about talent. It's 50% talent, 50% business, and those people that fade away is those that don't know how to do business, don't know how to sell themselves, market themselves. People have ideas all the time, but execution, you know, that's rare. Not everything will work out. People respond well to certain figures, but they won't respond so well. They'll, we just keep doing it until we see the result that way. Also, I think the key is simple. You don't have to take it so seriously. You don't have to make it so edgy or so freaking perfect and new. There's nothing like that. You just gotta be authentic. You know, you just gotta be true to yourself and really represent your intention of why you're doing the brand has to really stand up. A lot of times, I think people just want to do it for the sake of doing it. I think now consumers are really smart, so you can't just do a brand just out of that. You know, you gotta have respect for them as well, and then you'll return back to them. My advice is to keep working. Just keep doing it. Keep doing it, keep doing it. The thing with Instagram is now like everybody has a great window to the world. Don't listen to anybody, just keep doing it. Everybody have gone through the struggle. People, everybody at the top have gone through the struggle, so you have to struggle first, man. Break by break, layer by layer. Right, we're a space-inspired clothing brand from Indonesia. Our brand's about this guy, Nick Vlad. Is he part of the Russian space program? Yeah, so that's why I had to name Cosmonauts. Why space? There's like limitless imagination that we have in like kind of exploring it and anything can happen. So who's to say that there's no aliens or whatever pyramids in space and all the design that we do, you know, who's to say that they don't exist somewhere out there? What do you think it is about Indonesia, man? Right now, it seems like, you know, just over the past few years, it really announced itself to the world as almost like a very free-spirited pop-cultural hub of Southeast Asia, and I don't think anybody fully expected it. To be honest, there's a lot of really creative people out there in Indonesia, and we haven't really been exposed to the rest of the world yet, you know, and it's really good that people are really taking it on now, and all these creative people are getting out there, so that's really exciting. So hopefully we'll start to emerge more out there and be more recognized throughout the whole world. Ghazalyn, what are we looking at behind us? It's actually an art installation, so everybody actually gets to participate in this. Ah! But great job, David, you are part of the artwork. She said her goal was to recreate that feeling of child-like spontaneity. And guess what? I felt it, do you want to do it? She called it second childhood. All right, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go spray the dinosaur. Hey, you guys are a retail store here in Singapore. You guys carry other brands, but you also carry your own brand. Our own brand is called Lucky N. It's really about the Oriental, you know, Chinese, Asians, going out from Asia to the rest of the world, and that's how we ended up in Singapore as well. You know, so Lucky N is the extension of that. You know, we still have our family gatherings, our gambling, that we really love, and our food. So that's what this brand is about. Is this Lao Fuzi? It's an inspiration from Lao Fuzi. All right, this is Lao Fuzi. This is a character in Lao Fuzi. You see a lot of this, and you know, where you can have your haircut, the little kids will have this book. Okay, we've run a fidget around here, it's a book for you to read. So this is something that we grew up with. Okay, what is this? What do we look at? It's a reversible kid, you know, kimono with a hoodie. Oh, there's a hoodie? Hoodie kimono. Exactly, and it's a world of reversible. Wow, wow, the silk inside. David actually just got a big kimono the other day. So you've got, David's kind of on a kimono wave right now. Come out to the fight like this. I'm not the biggest bear brick expert, shout out to MediCom, but my favorite bear bricks, I'm more into the design of the bear brick rather than what it represents. So for example, I love these because they're shiny, they're darumas, and for me, obviously the other ones that really catch my eye is really this Jean-Michel Basquiat, RIP to Basquiat. But I actually really like this mickey, Nita Kahawa one too. Hey, nice to meet you, David. Thanks for coming. Can you tell us a little bit what is O-Bot and what are you guys trying to accomplish? It's a vintage toys with a new twist of a contemporary art message. You were saying the heart of the robot can always be switched out, right? So whoever's controlling the robot, for example, that has a panda controlling a cat. Usually the ones who control are the ones who are smarter. Especially there that we have this little one that we call the happy clown. So this is what? He's controlled by the devil and then he leaves all the kids to come and eat more happy meal. Okay. Hey man, you said it, I'm pro McDonalds. Yo, I feel like, this is not McDonalds. This is whatever. Oh, okay, okay. All right, I'm with Appa Yang Fresh from Johou Baru. So can you tell us about your guys' art? Yeah, I mostly do mural art but slowly tapping into graffiti. So I usually draw flowers around town. I love other types of graffiti too but it doesn't, sometimes you look at it, if you don't understand that world, you just like, I don't know what it is, right? But though everybody know what you're doing. Yeah, I hope so, but actually to be honest, I'm just gonna give it a go with whatever I do. The most important thing is just to have fun with it even though some people might say, this ain't graffiti, but then again, I'm just doing what I love, that's all. All right you guys, we are here at an exhibition by Andre Tan. He mixes a lot of pop culture and high-end sort of brands together. Like look here, Chief Wiggins from The Simpsons. First of all, he has funny eyes. He's got the Louis Monogram print Gucci coffee cup. This is trippy. A lot of stuff going on and then there's Chanel in the background. This is one of my favorite booths. This has some really cool artwork here. I think for me, art really needs to have an accessible entry point for people to even get into it. And you know, we used to live in the Lower East Side. There were so many different art galleries and some of the stuff is so abstract. It's difficult to sink your teeth into. This is easy to sink your teeth into. This is pop art. Pop art using pop culture. It's generally easier to enjoy and understand at least on a shallow level. We're here with Joanna from Cartier Cartel. What we want people to take away from the event is something new. We don't want people to come here, see what they usually like and just take home that. We want them to learn new things. If you're into sneakers, great. Come here and learn more about art. Learn more about tattoos. Learn more about anything else that on top of the things that you're here to see. It goes beyond product. You're not just selling the product. You're selling the minds behind who designed the shoes or who designed the clothing or who's the artist behind the collaboration. You're learning all of those things. Today, I'm one of the co-founders of Cartier Cartel. Guys, check out every year in December where and when Cartier Cartel is happening and hope you guys can come down and take a look and experience yourself firsthand. If you were to go to a singular con, if you are a gig walking through a con, you'll be judged because you don't have any tattoos on you or your dressing is wrong. But right now, you can see all sorts of people going through. You have families, you have young kids, some rocking expensive sneakers, you know, rocking boots, even. There's no comparison. Without comparison, there's nothing to pretend. And egos are put aside. You just want to learn passion as its simplest form. And I think it's just cool to see like people care about street culture but they still care about being Asian. I think like in the West, a lot of us, we are born and raised there. It's pretty much you're going to pick one or the other. It's like you're either going to speak your parents' language but then you're just going to become a doctor or a lawyer or you're going to project being Asian and you're going to go into the street culture or whatever subculture your parents don't approve of. And it's like, this is going to be one or the other but then here I see people do both. Yo, thank you so much for watching that video here on Culture Cartel 2019 here in Singapore. This whole scene for street culture in this region, Southeast Asia, Singapore is really, really on its way up. Obviously because it's a new culture to the region, there's a ton of room for opportunity. And I think that that gap is going to be filled up in a unique way, its own distinct version. They have a good starting point right now. They're starting pure, they're starting with the culture, they're starting with understanding and teaching and learning and that's the best way to start. One last thing, if you're going to visit Singapore, I say come during one of these big conventions that gives you something to do. Listen, the food here is good and it's always here though but stuff like this, it only happens a few times a year. Shout out to everybody who showed so much love. Shout out to everybody that was in the video and just thank you so much for watching. Guys, if you like that video, make sure you give this video a huge thumbs up. Click subscribe, hit the notifications. Let us know in the comments below what you took away from the video because it was really long, there was a lot to say. And then also tell us somewhere else or some other event that you know that we should check out. Let us know in the comment section below. And until next time, you guys we're in Singapore. We're out. Peace. A-O-D-J, can you turn the music up? How do they feel? You have the power.