Bariq Cobbs is an artist, a fashionista, and a flat-foot hustler. Growing up in Mill Creek, he loved to sketch his favorite people and cartoon characters: Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, Spider Man, Goofy, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, the Hulk. Cobbs knew he was onto something when his dad asked if he’d traced his drawing of the Pink Panther. He had made it freehand.
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Cobbs’ mom enrolled Bariq and his brothers in art classes at Fleisher Art Memorial in Bella Vista. “All my brothers, we all could draw,” he says. “I used to draw all day … We couldn’t go outside during the week, so I used to be drawing, watching everybody, drawing the whole block outside.” Once he saw the 1984 movie Beat Street, “it was over,” he says. “I used to graffiti books,” including his own graffiti version of Crockett and Tubbs — a “‘Miami Vice’ jawn.”
Meanwhile, his dad loved fashion. “He was an impeccable dresser,” says Cobbs. “He always got GQ magazine, and wore a Gucci sweatsuit back in the day with terry cloth socks.”
After high school, Cobbs, who grew up Muslim, enrolled in the Philadelphia College of Art (the future University of the Arts) and took his first art history class. “It was all White Christianity. I couldn’t relate to it,” he remembers. That changed when he saw a book on African art and artifacts in the school library and “connected with it immediately.”
Soon, he was drawing characters with African masks wearing hats, sneakers and grills. After someone asked him if he could put one of his sketches on a t-shirt, he started making more, under the labels Tribe Vibe and Funky Roots lines. One day, at the old JL on South Street, he ran into Will Smith. The rest is Fresh Prince of Bel Air history. The first time he saw Smith wearing one of his shirts on the show, “I ain’t gonna front. That was a Grammy moment,” he says. “That was basically going viral back then — but not only that, it was the culture from the start.” Two West Philly guys, representing their backgrounds, with style.
From there, he did pop-ups at John Wanamaker and Nordstrom — “We called it a demo back then” — and had his line featured on “In Living Color,” on Shock G, TLC and Tupac. Philly’s top barbershops carried his work, shirts with guys in Tims, or on jet skis. Whatever was happening, he was reflecting it, “always reinventing, creating new stuff that nobody never seen before.”
His next move: Abstract art, “something that you couldn’t describe, but you knew it was hot,” a style reflected in his co-founded brand of graffiti-influenced handpainted streetwear, Miskeen Originals. Soon, Nike was calling, wanting to collab to coincide with their sponsorship of an up-and-coming baller from Akron, Ohio, a young kid named LeBron James. Philadelphia boxer Bernard Hopkins repped the line during his HBO-aired fights.
When Miskeen began on a 20-year hiatus (it came back a few years ago), Cobbs moved back to fine art. His paintings appeared in exhibitions at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Please Touch Museum, and around the world. For a 2014 show in Rome, the newspaper Il Messaggero did a 24-page spread of his work. He’s heading back to Rome this year for an art festival. “For me,” he says, “It’s always either art, or it’s gonna be fashion.”
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