As memory recalls, though, 1999 is a good reference point to most of my work. By this tiume I had already graduated high school and ITT technical Institute. I had already opened my own airbrush shop after several trials and errors with the airbrush business. I had already been stabbed and went through a major change in my life. I found medication that would help me focus and create all that I continue to create up to this date. I am not saying I am trying to relive my youth. I am saying almost everything that I am doing now or have done except flying airplanes, has been from the instructions I gave myself around that time, nineteen ninety nine.

Since that time I had a realization that I wanted to create art, and become a Entreprenuer in the Art field. That was my goal in 1999. I began airbrushing at flea markets and malls. Sharpstown Mall was my location at that time. I began starting to do car shows and other events where I could sell my art. In fact, if any member of the Carmona family is reading this, around this time was when I started airbrushing as a vendor in the Los Magnificos Car Shows and other events. I had the pleasure to work with the Carmona family for several years up to this day, and I am very proud of Jon Chuck continuing the WEGO tour movement. Currently, this is the group that I continue to follow and support. All others that I do not support, are not worth mentioning, David.

At this time I started experimenting with making my own music. Skarnek is the name that I was given by this group “Gulg Coast Cartel” I joined when I was living in Louisianna, south of LaFayette. The group did not last long but I kept the name and my own houston group Airtek Gs. The beginning of Airtek in the year 2000. I combined my name Airbrush Tekniques into a shorter version Airtek, and created a new magazine called Airtek 2000. Airtek 2G, since G is a grand or a thousand. So there is the definition of Airtek (Airbrush Tekniques) and G as in grand or thousand. I mention “G” because it is the beginning of G-Rated. I am telling you, everything I do began a little bit after the time that I got stabbed in 1995 in Spring Branch off of Long Point Street. Therefore, anyone who posts about The Branch and wonders why I am there. I have been in tha branch since the 90s. You might not have seen me since I spent most of my time in Southwest, then South Side and North Side, then Pasadena, until I finally decided to take my business location to the area where I also reside in, Spring Branch. The goal was to buy a house that I can run a business out of. Appartently the lot I have does not have the commercial permits, even though up and down Campbell others do have their house businesses.

Back to 1999, we sure did party like it was 1999, and it was and we was blunted. Chiefing like my homeboy Chief. I was airbrushing and rapping, networking with as many people that I could, to help me on my journey. I needed to advertise. Advertising was not as easy at it is now. There was no social media, the internet was barely introduced not too long before to the mass public, and we did not spend much time on the monitors or at home. I kept thinking of how I could not just put together into one business card or flyer what it was that I was trying to do. So I thought the best way for me to do it is to create my own magazine, in order to promote my art as well as other artists, my poems as well as other poets, and my music along with other musicians. As an artist, I have always been attracted to the night life, and the night life has been attracted to me, hiring me to paint and entertain. This has been since the late 1990’s. I wanted to advertise everything. To me it seemed like that was going to cost a lot of money to make one flyer/ business card for music. One flyer / business card for airbrush. One business card for bodyart, since many “professionals” act like bodyart and the love and passion for the woman’s body is taboo. One for poetry, one for art, one for carshows, etc. I thought, since Lowrider Magazine had rejected my art several times to my knowledge, I would create my own magazine for art, airbrush, poetry, music, and events. The name of that magazine was Airtek 2000. I remember even being in a studio rapping a song to it.

One thing that I did not learn to do, is obtain government funding for businesses, private funding for artists, writters, musicians. Had I known what I have just figured out now, I would have applied for funding for each of those, so I could hire the right people to help me make each business successful with its own team. The information that is out there now was not out there before, available for us minorities. So I did what anyone from the branch, from the minority populated areas as they call us. I started slanging, in order to fund my projects and try to get started in the path to success. So anyone who talks about me and what I have, done. No one was there to say, hey you are an artist, let me fund you. Hey there, you are trying to become a rapper, let me fund you. Hey you are a writer, let me fund you. Hey you are an aspiring new magazine, let me fund you. There was no social network on the world wide web, as there is now. The streets were our social network. And I did not sell myselft to a greater source like Belly. I stayed young, brown and independent, like Master P would sort of say. Many of my poems were actually my way of I guess creating my own blog with poetic words to reply or go along with many of Tupac’s songs.

I studied the writer that Tupac most promoted, which was Machiavelli. I modeled my style to his style that led him to be considered a controversial writer, since in one book he wrote the principles of a republic and why it is important. On the other end he wrote a book on how to be a prince. I saw nothing controversial about it, just the energies of positive and negative working together, and Nicolo Machiavelli was just exposing the truth, in my eyes. For all who would critize my statement, it is my opinion. As a writer I decided, again in 1999, that I would write a poetry book called All About U, a collection of all the positive inspirational poems I had in my pocket that I had written. Then I had one I wanted to release after, called All About Me, which would reflect the negative poetry that I had written, that reflected on all those events that happened in my life that made me feel like I was in hell. Then after those two books I was going to release one called “The Truth I Speak” which would tie both the positive and negative books and explain my life in general, mixed with both the positive and negative. That was my goal as a writer and a rapper in 1999.

This was me, Lexo or Skarnek, before I became a single father. Before the new millenium. I was an artist, a writer, a poet, a rapper, and a magazine producer. I needed to fund my businesses, so I was also a dealer. Then I got into a bad situation outside the hoods I roamed around due to a family member, that got me put in jail, after we had made it through all these things going on in the world. I had made a few issues of Airtek 2000 magazine and was entertaining the idea of G-Rated Magazine when I ended up getting locked up. If I had been looked at like a troublemaker in my family, my community and the government before I got arrested, think of my struggles after being incarcerated. And how my own family would look at me, I had arrived to the thought, who would want to fund me?

Tatianna Pearl Luna was born in 2004 and I started raising her on my own, a single father. While I have been learning the job of parenting. While I did that I made sure I maintained a full time job doing Computer Aided Drafting, and still doing everything I wanted to do in my life, art, airbrush, music, poetry, writing, magazine and bodyart. It is what I have always been since around 1999 or earlier. As mentioned before, the earliest dates I have on my current files are 1999, which seems to be when I undertook the task of organizing many of my works. It was a year of organization. So this is what I did and hold other jobs and tasks that would pay me money so I could feed my daughter and fund my projects. This could be the reason that I have an issue of the G-Rated Magazine randomly but consistently randomly since the time I started G-Rated Magazine. At that time I again had a shop inside of a mall and was doing many events and had a team of people who worked and helped me. But I still had not found the proper funding.

I have seen all these companies and individuals who have been funded but I still did not know how to ask. I just received this knowledge and information with my friends, Anthony Hall and Ed Miles, to give a shout out over all others since they have worked with me the closest aligning to my goals I had set a long time ago before I met either one. They are getting me going on the track to get the funding but I am still only getting started in this process.

This is the best way for me to introduce myself and this poem that Makavenna and I made into a song called “Who do you blame?” Not only from my life experiences but also my research, it brought me to the way I wrote my answer to that question. I am interested in knowing how others answer that question.