Local legends: Rappin’ Max Robot is now an 18-foot-tall sculpture

By Lamar Salter

Orr with a larger-than-life Rappin’ Max (Courtesy Welder Underground)

On a recent sunny Sunday outside of the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx, community members gathered to celebrate the unveiling of an 18-foot-tall metallic tribute to the history and culture of the most important art form of our era. The sculpture is of Rappin’ Max Robot, a character that appeared in the first hip-hop comic book in 1986, designed by artist Eric Orr.

Only about 500 copies of the original comic book were ever printed, with help from Orr’s friend Keith Haring, but Rappin’ Max Robot’s foothold on the old-school culture is about as gigantic as the new sculpture that commemorates him.

The massive work of art was constructed in collaboration with a Bushwick collective known as Welder Underground, a nonprofit that helps young people learn skills and create projects using the fabrication process of welding.

“I’m really overwhelmed right now,” Orr said during a speech at the unveiling. “I’m very thankful.”

One of the collective’s apprentices, Nephew, then added the finishing touch: he welded an antenna to Rappin’ Max’s head — deploying a skill he learned only about six months ago.

Forging a future
Welder Underground is an offshoot of Collab, an innovation lab and fabrication studio founded and operated by husband and wife duo Marc and Adina Levin. Collab specializes in large experiential marketing installations that utilize everything from stop motion to 3D printing to photography to VR/AR development.

The Levins also focus on providing support and opportunities to younger people through education initiatives that help students learn different technical skills, including one program that taught robotics to students from Stuyvesant High School. Those same students would then participate in a program teaching the skills they learned to younger students at Urban Assembly.

“The thing about welding is that once you put down the hood and you have a torch in your hand and you can close that gap on two pieces of metal, that’s a very powerful thing,” says Levin. “And it can happen almost immediately.”

Sustainability is another important component of Welder Underground.

“We need to build things that last for hundreds of years now,” Levin adds. “We can’t keep living on a disposable planet.”

Welder Underground’s apprenticeship program is paid and many of the apprentices were selected via connections to other nonprofits and word of mouth in the community. Most of the six apprentices started off with little to no skills in welding or even design — which is Levin’s intention.

“What we look for in kids is really the desire to want to just participate in the smallest of things, like showing up on time,” Levin says. “I don’t care what they’ve done in terms of anything negative that’s going on in their lives. If you’ve gone through shit, you have good experience.”

Rappin’ Mac (Courtesy Eric Orr/Cornell Hip Hop Collection)

Building Rappin’ Max
To create Rappin’ Max Robot, the apprentices went through different levels of machine and safety training to learn the fabrication process and eventually started working with sculptors.

“The people that you work with definitely make whatever you’re doing more enjoyable than what you’re actually doing,” says apprentice Alyssa Valentine. “All you gotta do is really put your mind to it.”

For apprentice Eric M. Orr, the son of Rappin Max’s creator, joining the collective was not just a chance to be a part of his father’s legacy, but also to build something for himself.

“Everyone thinks that I just did this because it was my dad’s project,” he says. “But more so I did it because I wanted to learn a new skill that would be with me forever.”

Rappin’ Max at his perch in the Bronx (Photo by Lamar Salter)

To Paris with love
After a rigorous eight months, Rappin’ Max was completed and unveiled at the Collab studio before being transported to the Bronx. The sculpture will continue to post up at the Hip Hop Museum for about a year before eventually making the trek to Paris where it will live at the famous Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad as part of a gift celebrating the first (and possibly only) time Breaking was included as a sport at The Olympics. The team also plans to install a portable speaker on the statue that will play music curated by the Hip Hop Museum.

“Jazz and hip-hop are the two great exports of American culture,” says Levin. ”So that relationship of connecting the home of hip-hop to some other place on the planet seemed like a good thing to do.”

Levin says new apprentices will join the collective for another six-month program to work on an unannounced project in development. Down the line, he says he would like to see the collective grow into a national program with a presence in other cities like Chicago and Detroit.

And for the current apprentices who are approaching the end of their tenure, Levin said they are helping them build up their resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles to find jobs, as well as leverage the connections they have in the business to help them find jobs that could interest them, even if it’s not in welding.

“They came in learning to fabricate metal, to weld, but then they could end up designing or producing a film,” Levin says. “I want all of them to become invaluable anywhere they go. We want we want young people to walk in here and see there’s a glimmer of hope and a glimmer of a future.”