The Rapper Equivalents of Famous Artists

Though rap can be incredibly descriptive, it doesn’t always have a lot in common aesthetically with the visual arts. Then again, rappers and visual artists tend to share many similarities—in practice, in lifestyle, in mass appeal. Sure, Kanye’s all on about Le Corbusier of late, but we can imagine many rappers as some of the artists we know and love. Connect the dots between hip-hop and the art world with The Rapper Equivalents of Favorite Artists.

RELATED: 20 Instagrams of Rappers Putting on the Art World

RELATED: The Best Album Covers of 2013 (So Far)

You can almost see the arcs and splatters and dots of Jackson Pollock in the bouncing rhymes of the Wu Tang Clan's Brooklyn MC, Ol' Dirty Bastard. Considered to be kind of folk heroes, they were as integral to their crafts as could possibly be—they received concurrent establishment recognition while remaining on the fringe. So many try and imitate the styles of these two, and no one ever, ever comes close. They were also both notorious alcoholics. ODB was on The Alkoholiks ' track "Hip Hop Drunkies" in 1997.

Considering how much the main Roc Boy has rapped about him recently, Jay Z wants us to fancy him as a Jean Michel Basquiat. Though some critics have agreed with that, we think his career trajectory matches that of street artist Shepard Fairey better. Two artists who earned their initial acclaim by the allure of the street and the risk of their illegal provocations (Fairey with street art and Jay Z with drug dealing). And now, they've both expanded into big business, what with Magna Carta Holy Grail going platinum before it even came out and Fairey's OBEY brand worth millions.

Pop-art maven Jess Koons and Queensbridge rapper Nas both scored critically loved early works then struggled to keep public favor after these early masterpiece-level achievements. They both also had somewhat harried public relationships that became central in their work; in the case of Koons, his early-'90s marriage to Hungarian porn star Cicciolina became a point of serious contention when he published graphic photographs of the two of them and claimed them as art. Nas and singer Kelis had a very public divorce in 2009. On the cover of his 2012 album Life Is Good, he held her wedding dress. But recently, Nas and Koons seem more comfortable in their own skin then ever—they're both regaining some critical ground and contributing to the world philanthropically.

This one is simple: besides creating a fair amount of their own work, Dre and Warhol are responsible for helping produce so many works by so many others. If Warhol could launch another artist's or musician's career just by proximity, so too could Dr. Dre when producing anyone's album. Warhol helped beget The Velvet Underground; Dre helped beget Eminem. There you have it.

No two artists are quite so versatile as Nicki Minaj and Cindy Sherman and so malleable that they're scarcely recognizable outside of their art. Nicki can rap; she can sing; she can rap-sing; she can talk shit, and she doesn't put up with any guff. Sherman is similarly multifaceted: she sets up her own shots, she does her own makeup and costumes and transforms into the subjects of her photos. They can morph into anything they desire, both superficially and technically.

If you've listened to any amount of Danny Brown, you're sure to notice his obsession with the female genitalia. And though American Western painter Georgia O'Keefe always maintained her paintings of flowers weren't vaginal, it's hard to ignore the resemblance. I wonder if Danny has purchased an O'Keeffe since his recent rise to fame?

Though Lil B's timeline as a rapper is a bit more accelerated than Yoko Ono's as an artist, thanks to information technologies, the parallels in their art and message are too much to ignore. Two strong personalities in themselves, they are associated also with groups (The Beatles and The Pack). But their most similar characteristic is their desire to empower their audiences. Both Ono and B use their platforms to deliver messages of inspiration. Often, they do so on Twitter. Here's one from Lil B: "I hope well for all the children's around the worlds mental health and safety i love you." That's basically the equivalent of Yoko's "We know that our thinking and our actions, no matter how small they are, affect the whole world." Both of those are tweets. Throw in that not everyone "gets" or accepts the work of these enigmas, and the match is complete.

It's hard to always tell exactly what drives the inspiration of the art world's most famous Surrealist, Salvador Dalí. Likewise, grasping the far-out raps of the Bronx's prodigal Ultramgnetic MC, Kool Keith, is a surreal journey. "In my real world, orangutans dance for Thanksgiving with skeleton bones and skunk tails," he says in his track "Halfsharkalligatorhalfhuman." That's the surreal fuckery we're used to from all of his projects—it's also the kind of twisted vision we're used to seeing on the canvases of Dalí. Eccentric public personas aside, they have as much in common as they don’t, decades and worlds apart.

Despite broad commercial success and deep inundation in their own industry circles, Julian Schnabel and Swizz Beats haven't always stayed in good public standing, at times accused of representing everything that's gone wrong with their respective industries: art-world excess and music-circle cronyism. They've also both been accused of riding on the coattails of others: Schnabel with Basquiat, Beatz with wife Alicia Keys. They are also multidisciplinary. Schnabel took up directing after coming to fame with his paintings, and Beatz himself has explored visual art in recent years.