The Rumble Kong League has taken the NFT world by storm, with many NBA players getting in early, as the company looks to demonstrate what a virtual basketball league looks like in the metaverse.
SLAM recently caught up with the artist who designed the Rumble Kong League’s electrifying visuals, Le’Jon LaMon, aka Sickpencil, to learn more about how he got involved with RKL.
SLAM: How did you get into art?
SICKPENCIL: Art was just something I always did. My grandmother started me, and its funny when I look back, it seems like I just could not let it go.
SLAM: Do you have a favorite project?
SP: I think my Nipsey [Hussle] murals. That was such an interesting time. I had never even done murals before and I was just beginning my self-employed art career. [It was] a sad situation but it pushed me into where I am now. I felt really good when I was working on those murals. I have a Kobe mural in Downtown L.A., on a random brick wall, I believe on Hill St. Or I did…I’m honestly not sure it’s still there because taggers were busy during COVID.
SLAM: Are you a big hoops fan?
SP: For sure. I went to Fairfax, a huge basketball school. Our school team was sponsored by LeBron. The famous Fairfax LeBron shoes were during my time there.
SLAM: How did you get involved with Rumble Kong League?
SP: I found myself doing a lot of derivative Ape artwork. I must have done 50 or 60 Ape commissions and I met a lot of great people and found a good set of collectors who supported it. Marcus [Bläsche, RKL CEO] found me this way and came to me with an idea to create a 10k Project based off Kongs. I then went and created a prototype which was horrible, but I tend to do this thing where I create something, and sit on it for a bit and I come back to it with a completely different vision of it. That next design was the one we both loved.
SLAM: What’s most intriguing about RKL?
SP: The entirety of the project. I’m only nine months or so into NFTs and crypto, and the guys on the RKL team…I’ve learned a ton from them about the NFT space. It’s a constant learning experience and I get to create, so it’s great.
Learn more about the Rumble Kong League here.
Illustration by Sickpencil.
