WHERE'D THEY GO?: Laze and hypno, our very own urban clothing

It must have been back in 1999 or 2000, when i saw a tribesmen video 'plenty nonsense' (remember trybes men..shake bodi!! good'ol days), then i saw freestyle and El-dee, wearing these jersey like tops with designs i have never seen before, good designs, no scratch that, GREAT designs. I mean this was the era of Rocawear, Sean John, Fubu, and yet these young boys were rocking this unknown, (at least to me) but great looking stuff. That was my informal introduction to LAZE, i designer whom i believe was from Yabatech and did these wonders on t-shirts by hand! Then not long later in school, either late secondary or early uni, I saw this guy were an ash-coloured t-shirt, with the letters H-Y-P-N-O, boldly printed on top and what seemed to be a feminine figure upside down in some sort of 'backflipish' position.

"NOT AS VIBRANT AS I REMEMBER..."

The shirt was in a word,..MAD! I was like were did you get this? he was like 'some dude in Lag does them...', also by hand might I add. Thus, i was introduced to HYPNO. Time passed and I keep seeing more and more of these fabulous designs, Cartoon Characters inspired by Naija, consuming the entirety of the front facing side of the shirts, gritty inscriptions, bold logos...crazy stuff, i even read a couple of newspaper articles and features of these artists/designers. As a young designer at the time, with ambitions of having my very own clothing line (which i still do) these guys were a great inspiration to me, like the holy grail of urban clothing design matching the likes of Fubu, damani dada(where'd they do to), marc ecko etc . But, in the last couple of years, it dawned on me that the these guys are gone, like, nowhere to be seen, Why? I mean in this age of the Nigerian Music industry's boom I'd have thought they'd be making a killing, cuz those seemed to be their foremost customers, but, still nowhere in sight. I did some digging and found http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hypno-Clothing-Company/216888475093, not as vibrant as I remember it, but still in existence nonetheless... and as  for Laze I'm still searching. The long and short of my rambling is that I miss seeing these proudly Nigeria urban graphic designs out in the media where they belong, I miss seeing them being celebrated, I miss being inspired and challenged by them all at the same time, and I keep wondering, Where'd they go?

photo credits go to the above referenced facebook page.