When Rahmaan Statik talks about the mural he painted on West Hubbard at North Desplaines streets, he refers to it as his “magnum opus project.”
Using surplus paint from previous projects, the prolific Chicago artist painted this West Town mural of his old friend, Lawrence “Binky” Tolefree. He took over the corner spot in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t a commissioned project, and the artistic freedom was all his.
“Painting murals on the street in the pandemic was completely chaotic,” Statik says. His own parked truck was totaled after another car hit it at a gas station while he painted. He still considers Tolefree’s image one of his best, and 2020 was his “most prolific” year.
“My aim with that mural was to be ambitious and fearless,” he says. “You’re doing art for the people.”
Tolefree says he appreciates the West Town location, surrounded by other murals.
“I’m glad it’s where it’s at because there are a lot of murals around there, and it goes unbothered. It won’t get tagged up,” he says.
Tolefree and Statik became close after Statik visited Thailand while Tolefree was living there for four years starting in 2015.
“I got homesick and I wanted to find anything Chicago related, and I wanted to find Chicago people there,” Statik says. Mutual friends connected him with Tolefree. “We’ve been friends since then.”
Tolefree, who lives in Bronzeville, works as an emcee, comedian, mentor and teacher.
He remembers joking a couple times that Statik should put him in a mural. Even after Statik asked Tolefree to sit for a photo, Tolefree didn’t realize that a mural was actually planned.
The corner painting, titled “I ain’t scared of you mother****ers,” is named after a famous line by the late comedian Bernie Mac, one of Tolefree’s favorites. Tolefree and Mac once lived next door to each other when Tolefree was a kid in the south suburbs.
Tolefree calls the mural his “legacy.”
“When people say your name, how do they remember you? It’s really important to me. The mural, it makes me blush every single time. It’s crazy. It’s surreal every time.”
Statik is a South Side native who works out of Bridgeport Art Center. He painted his first mural in 1996 in the Promontory Point underpass in Hyde Park. Since then he has painted more than 400 murals around the globe, and corporate clients include Toyota, Coca-Cola and the village of Rosemont.
Still, Statik says he’s looking for more open wall space to paint murals unconstrained by someone else’s vision. He’ll bring the supplies “in exchange for letting me paint whatever I want to paint.”
High-profile commissions may help pay the bills, but “your best project will come when you sponsor yourself,” Statik says.