Originally aired on NBC Bay Area TV
“Bay Area Revelations – The Culture of Hiphop – Hieroglyphics”
04/27/19
The creation of Hieroglyphics.com as told by A-Plus, Domino and Pep Love of the Hieroglyphics crew.
Narrator: In 1995 Hieroglyphics took a career risk: they left their record label and turned to a new, high-tech tool to connect with fans.
A-Plus: Around 1995, Hieroglyphics is the first group ever in the world with an internet site, period. We got our internet site by way of this guy named Stinke — Shout-out, Stinke. He was just like a nerdy kid from Philadelphia. Tajai was a student at Stanford and at that time only colleges had access to the Internet. So Tajai would be “surfing [the internet]” at school, in Stanford, and that’s how he found the dude Stinke who had built a Hieroglyphics site in 1995.
Domino: That was huge for us and that allowed us to even the playing field as far as putting out records when we were no longer on a major label. Because the internet wasn’t oversaturated yet so we were direct-to-fans.
Narrator: The internet gave Hieroglyphics tremendous exposure: their third-eye logo is one of the most recognized in hip-hop.