Al Diaz on the Real Meaning Behind SAMO With Basquiat

For Al Diaz, the history of SAMO© has never been as simple as the story that followed it. Created with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the late 1970s, SAMO© has since been folded into the mythology surrounding Basquiat, often described as an alias, a conventional graffiti tag or shorthand for “Same Old Shit.” Diaz sees it differently. What the two teenagers developed was closer to an invented product: a series of cryptic, satirical messages written for anyone walking the streets of downtown New York, no...