The legacies of Snoop Dogg and Tupac loom large in Los Angeles, as their fingerprints are all over West Coast rap, but one muralist is trying to preserve a tangible homage to them.
Earlier this week, a Los Angeles painter going by @sloe_motions on Instagram posted that his mural prominently featuring Snoop and Tupac is at risk of being taken down. The late Kobe Bryant, Danny Trejo, Vin Scully, and Oscar De La Hoya are also in the mural.
(@sloe_motions)“SAVE THE LA MURAL IN BELLFLOWER! we recently received a notice to take down this mural in the city of bellflower. I want to reach out to everyone n help get the word spread to keep this up. this is our culture and these are our city’s,government policies n politics shouldn’t have any effect on the peoples art or expression,” the artist captioned an Instagram video showing the mural in question.
The caption continues, “I’m tired of the cities tryna stop artist and make things hard on us when we are the ones giving the inspiration to the community’s n giving back in a real way. this mural is also on the owners property. I want to start fighting for what is ours and stop letting these city people silence our art and making them think there’s no encouragement in our community’s without them. they love to hop on the train tho when we bring good attention n want to act like they were apart of it the whole time and take credit.”
They added, “Everyone i had been in touch with loved this mural and long time residents of the area kept saying ‘we have nothing cool like this in our area.’ let’s get this mural to stay and please share if u can.”
Fox 11 Los Angeles quoted the property’s owner, Renae Cornejo, “I guess [we] broke a code we didn’t know about.” Cornejo was confused as to why city officials are getting involved because “it’s our home; we own the property.”
“We didn’t know about the code violation until we got served last week with it. So we’re doing our best to work with the city,” property co-owner Robert Cornejo added.
The Change.org petition to save the mural was closing in on 5,000 signatures as of April 28.