Laurens Jansen isn't the most likely Rock The Bells collaborator. However, the former Belgian professional basketball player, and current caretaker for disabled adults in Antwerp, illustrates that those contributing to Hip-Hop culture refuse to be pigeonholed as this or that. Rather, Jansen is simply piloted by an intense love for the men and women who made the music that shaped, and in turn, feels compelled to honor them in the best way he knows how; through pencil drawings.

Jansen's portraits have an uncanny knack for capturing even the smallest details of a subject's personality. It's as if these Hip-Hop icons actually sat and posed for him, and he's crafted art pieces that feel like they may have been locked away for decades.

We recently sat down with the artist to get a better understanding of his own journey, and why he and Rock The Bells chose to link up for a unique capsule collection that honors LL COOL J.

Tell me a little bit about you you ended up on this artistic path.

It started when I was about 10 years old and noticed the connection between Hip-Hop and basketball in the '90s. I fell in love with Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, and it was Shaquille O'Neal after that.

How were you finding Hip-Hop? It's pre-internet. Were people going to the States and bringing back tapes, or was there a local record shop?

At that age, I was lucky enough that a buddy of mine had just moved over to Belgium. He came from San Francisco. His dad had a bunch of West Coast Hip-Hop artists like Snoop and E-40. And then of course we could buy CDs back then, but it was pretty limited. I would take the bus, or my bike, and go to the record store. They would have like 1 million CDs — and like seven of them were Hip-Hop. The biggest names were Mobb Deep, Big Pun, Biggie, and Tupac. I fell in love with the whole culture, and it just fit for me at that time.

I got introduced to the West Coast first, but once I heard Biggie Smalls, I completely went for the East Coast. And until this day for me, the East Coast is more in line with my character. The '90s, the grimy beats and the heavy lyrics, and of course, in Belgium, we don't have a lot of sunshine. It's kind of like England, we have a lot of rain.

I remember I bought Wu-Tang Forever. Back then, I didn't have internet. We had a computer in the house, but no internet. And a buddy of mine told me, "You can put the CD in your computer and it has video clips on it.' So that's what really introduced me to the baggie jeans, the Timberlands, the hoodies, the Carhartts, and the big bubble jackets. Those video clips gave me a sense if, "Oh, this is dope.' That's the kind of stuff I want to be wearing." At that age, of course, it influences you a lot.

When did you kind of discover that you had this artistic talent?

That was a very, very clear moment for me. It's when I bought Biggie's Life After Death. The intro was just so emotional and heavy, and I really felt like I wanted to do something creative. So I opened up the CD booklet that had the black and white picture inside.

I remember it clear as glass, hearing the music, opening the book. I was like, 'I'm going to grab some pencils and I'm going to start drawing.' It was my first portrait, and it really like looked like the person was Biggie Smalls.

And from then on, I started drawing Biggie, Nas, some Wu-Tang, of course, Charles Barkley. I mixed it up as a kid. But that's what really made me realize, "Okay, I've got the talent." And the Hip-Hop music and the Hip-Hop culture really ignited the passion and the interest in doing something with it.

Did you kind of know that this was going to be your lane?

I knew right away that I wanted to create with my hands and not make music or write lyrics. But I did try graffiti. I tagged "LAW." But my name is Lawrence, so it was kind of obvious that all of a sudden — in the bus stops and the walls across the house and everywhere — they started seeing the tags. So at some point, somebody called the cops and said, "You got to check this out because it's becoming too much, the tag is everywhere." That's when I quit doing graffiti and I just started doing portraits again.

So you're channeling this one artistic side, but as I can surmise, based on you becoming a professional basketball player, you're also quite an athlete. Was it hard to balance, or did those things go together?

It wasn't possible to balance because basketball really took up every moment when I was 15. I was 6’7” and I wasn't skinny, so I got scouted to the top teams. From then on, I was practicing two to three times a day. When I was 18, I started making money with my basketball career, so there wasn't really that much time to draw. But when I would get emotional, I would always find my outlet in art. So for as far as I can remember, every time something would happen in my life — whether it was good or bad or whatever — It was my outlet to get that emotion out of me.

What did you create actually for Rock The Bells? And tell me a little bit about that process

I've been doing my Hip-Hop Heads series since 2017. It's something super recognizable, I've done expositions for MTV, for Biggie Smalls' family, for LAB Records, I've done a bunch of stuff. And at some point I got contacted by Rock The Bells and they saw my stuff because I had a collaboration with Ewing Athletics and did sneakers with Patrick Ewing's face on it.

I think the thing is, as an artist, you want to create something that's recognizable. I was doing black and white portraits. But you get to a point where your drawings become super realistic. I was thinking that at some point, my portraits are going to actually start looking like a photo. And I hate photorealism. I mean that's not creative for me. I mean, it's a great talent if you can do it, but where's the creativity?

I went to the store and I picked up a bunch of colored pencils. I came home, and I was like, "Okay, I got to simplify. I've got to leave out all the extras and all the stuff that I don't need. I just want to do the expression, that's it." So if I want to draw Biggie Smalls, he's going to be looking at you, like he's ready to rob you.

I want to do my own thing. If I have a vision, I'm going to keep doing it. And with the portraits, I didn't study what colors to use. I didn't study or look up what pencils would be the best. I just went to the store and I bought a bunch of stuff that felt right. So when people ask me, "What kind of pencils you use?" Well, I mix a bunch of pencils. I use standard cheap, really cheap pencils, that you would buy for your kids. And I mix those with really expensive wax based pencils. I would add some oil pastel with it. And that's why the portraits are so vibrant and sometimes people think, "Oh, it's a painting." And then they look closer at it and you see all the lines and the stripes and they're like, "The hell?! How do you do this?"

What is the key to capturing a person's essence?

I create portraits, I don't copy pictures. It's a triangle, you get the eyes, right, then the nose and the mouth. And when you get this triangle, it starts to take shape. Then the rest, you can freestyle a bit more. It's like, "I want it to have an earring or no earring. I want it to have a hat or no hat." But this triangle it's like the essence. And that's the most essential part to get that expression in. Biggie he was my ultimate inspiration to become an artist. His music was what really pushed me: he was big and overweight, I was a really tall kid, so he kind of pushed me.