How did your group kick off?

NISE: At first there was KEEN, RANE, WARM and Mr. ONE. They' all come from our neighborhood and our paths came together. We totally bombed the hood pretty quickly (around 1985 and '86). That's when the first anti-graffiti repression came down and most of us got busted. After that, things fell apart. That's when graffiti was first hitting Paris and the housing projects in the burbs. I stopped
tagging my neighborhood when I met RENO. He and I got together, and the result was that the M.C.S. group really took off, even though it has already existed before that. We went beyond being a graffiti group; we became a family. We all know each other pretty well and there's no bullshit between us. There are also some members of our crew who don't have any direct connection to graffiti but still they have more respect for it than some writers. We also work with others
who aren't part of the crew but bring in their energy and their own personality, like C.A.S., who had a big impact back in the days. Respect to KISER, the D.C.M. crew, C.T.K and T.O.P., who have made a big contribution to the French graff' scene.
New York taught us alot, too. There's not point in trying to hide that.

Early on you got focused on getting up on trains and railway walls?

Everybody: No we didn't piece at first. We started off bombing the insides. At that time nobody was writing on the walls along the tracks. Some train lines were better than others for that; some have practically no walls at all. There was a time when we were up on all the lines, but still some at more magic than others-and were hotter, too. For us, painting trains is getting back to our roots. What makes it so much fun is the risk and the defiance. Trains offer something that only the chosen few can take advantage of.

Who's active in your crew now?

Everybody: Most of the original members have quit. So have a lot of people we were close with back then, like N.P.C. and ELON. Now, everyone who made the crew what it is today is still down.

Why do you write graffiti, when there's so many easier things to do?

Everybody: We do it for the love of it. (One says): My mom works for the national train company (SNCF), and I like their trains better than she does. (Everybody:) Trains and walls are a good medium. Graffiti as we know it and the means that are used to carry it out are typical of our times. It's a kind of painting just like any other; technically speaking it's not inferior. We don't consider ourselves artists because we think our art is different from the stereotyped idea of some guy who's not in touch with reality, who just sits on his ass in his studio. We've made a voluntary and conscious choice to paint the way we do. We're graduates of the school of graffiti.
(RENO:) "It's something I feel in my guts.

Isn't it a little self-centered?

NISE: Wild style is the opposite of narcissism. Your letters are so complicated that few people can read your name. (Everybody:) But someone who doesn't want other people to see their work is not alive. An artist who paints canvases that are just going to stay in the attic forever isn't doing anybody any good and is much more self-centered. If his work doesn't get out of that closet, it means that it doesn't deserve to because he can't make it happen. But that's what you have to do in graffiti. You have to get it out to other people, even though that's hard. A tagger's ego isn't any bigger than
anyone else's. Graffiti, because of what it is, represents a return to the roots of art.
A writer has to produce a very good piece under very difficult conditions. Writers are born in an anonymous society where young people are doing their best to rise above the crowd and find their own level by doing graffiti. That's the issue with graffiti.