Origin Piece V — The Notorious B.I.G.

There are objects that become symbols.

And there are people who become legends.

Origin Piece V – The Notorious B.I.G. brings those two worlds together.

Built upon a pair of vintage Timberland 6-Inch boots, the work pays tribute to one of hip-hop’s most influential artists and to the culture that transformed fashion, music and identity into a shared visual language.

For me, this piece is also personal.

I grew up with hip-hop.

Not simply as music, but as a culture built on originality, reinterpretation and authorship. DJs sampled records. Writers transformed walls into canvases. Fashion became identity. Everything familiar could become something new.

This work follows that same philosophy.

Rather than creating an exact reproduction, The Notorious B.I.G. is an interpretation—a tribute that places a cultural icon into a different context through craftsmanship and material.

Like Spirit of the 9 Tails, the artwork was created by tattooing directly into leather using a professional tattoo machine. Every line is permanently embedded into the surface of the boots, treating leather as a medium rather than merely a material.

The choice of the classic Timberland is intentional.

For decades, the boot has been inseparable from New York street culture and hip-hop. It carries its own history before a single mark is added. By tattooing directly into that history, the object becomes something else entirely: neither footwear nor merchandise, but an original artwork.

This Origin Piece also marks another step in the evolution of tattooing on leather within the Baldr practice.

The first experiments proved the technique.

Spirit of the 9 Tails established it as a medium.

The Notorious B.I.G. explores what that medium can communicate when craftsmanship meets cultural memory.

As with every Origin Piece, this work exists only once.

One artwork.

One owner.

The original.