Jesus Is My Homeboy Official Original

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He said, “Jesus is MY homeboy. And he’s your homeboy, and your homeboy,” and he pointed at random faces above him and he continued, “and your homeboy. Jesus is my homeboy and he is all of yours too. He is your homeboy.” I came to L.A. to start a singing and acting career around 1980. Three of my sisters and my baby brother had all moved here from Texas. I stayed in Oklahoma for nine or ten months right before that, and in that time, I had about five jobs. There was a lot of prejudice there. I worked at a plant with the son of the county’s grand dragon, the leader of its section of the Ku Klux Klan, and we got into a fight. For an artist who regularly turns convention upside down, I find it interesting that LaChapelle chose to represent Jesus in such a traditional way—open-armed, stoic, and glowing like a nightlight (and unmistakably white). The choice was intentional, no doubt; I’m just trying to figure out what purpose it serves, because I feel that that sort of Jesus doesn’t fit comfortably into a modern-day context—he’s too rigid and inapproachable. In the photos, Jesus isn’t really hanging with his boys (or with his homegirl, Mary M.). Instead, it looks as if he dropped in from another planet. Any thoughts? I can tell you that one day in the late 1980s, I was at my mom’s house when this detective called. I thought it was a casting director, ‘cause I got calls over there like that all the time, and we were taught to answer them by saying our name really clearly. I answered the phone by saying, “Hello, this is Van Zan. Can I help you?” He was like, “Van Zan Frater?” I said, “Yeah.” Here, Jesus is portrayed as remarkably traditional and conspicuously white, draped in red and blue robes, echoing Leonard da Vinci's enduring mural from the 1490s, while the apostles in LaChapelle's version are of different races. Judging by their dress code, they are influenced by urban hip-hop culture.

Once everything had calmed down, I just kept thinking, ‘Jesus is my homeboy’ saved my life. I gotta do something with that. The apostles were not the aristocracy, they were not the well-to-do, they weren’t the popular people; they were sort of the dreamers and the misfits,” LaChapelle said in a 2008 interview for The Art Newspaper TV. If Jesus were here today, he said, he would be hanging out with the street people and the marginalized: the poor, the homeless, prostitutes, drug dealers, gangsters, and so on. And more than that, these people would have been his closest and most faithful band of followers. Eventually, she told me to give her a call after she got out of work. She worked at some hospital where the shifts were from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night. She said, “Come on by. I’m gonna take my bath, and by the time I get outta my bath, you should be here.” I was like, “booty call,” you know? He responded, “This is detective so-and-so. I need to talk to you. We got an anonymous phone call that said you were involved in a robbery a few years ago.”Jesus is My Homeboy” is way more than just an image.It is an epiphany. A revelation. It was not developed by a big fashion entity focused solely on making money. It was not created to cash in on a trend. “Jesus is My Homeboy” was born from a challenge that led to salvation; an inspiration fueled by a real life situation. When fashion and fine arts photographer David LaChapelle saw someone wearing a “Jesus is my Homeboy” T-shirt in 2003, he was touched by the simplicity of the message. It made him wonder who Jesus’ original homeboys (the twelve apostles) were—or rather, who they would have been had God chosen to incarnate himself in twenty-first-century America instead of in first-century Palestine. I remembered when I was a boy, me and my brothers and a couple of my friends in Texas would go hunting with our fathers. They’d build a fire, and we’d sit around and the old men would tell stories. Around one of those campfires, my dad once told me, “Never let a man tie you up, ‘cause he can do anything to you once he ties you up. And if he got a gun on you, make him kill you before he ties you up.”

Like many of the great masters, LaChapelle has been inspired by the classic nativity scene. While the artwork of Western religious narratives often glorified the church and portrayed Jesus in a more European mien, LaChapelle reimagines that tradition in this image, set in Africa. Van Zan Frater was a young Texan, recently relocated to Los Angeles. It was the 1980s, a time of great financial opportunity, and he was ready to make his place in the world. He was becoming familiar with the area, but didn’t know it well yet, so he pulled into the stark, unadorned parking lot of a run-down looking liquor store in South Central LA to use a pay phone. His guard was down when it should have been up. Way up.He got with another friend of his, named Chris, and they started working together making new shirts. Chris was dating a woman who was a wardrobe stylist for movies at the time, so I think she maybe gave the Jesus Is My Homeboy shirt to some people. jesusismyhomeboy worn by icon #pamelaanderson , just because your a celebrity doesn't mean you dont have good taste. David LaChapelle’s Jesus is My Home Boy series reinterprets traditional religious scenes in contemporary settings. David LaChapelle’s preference for transcendent themes, such as the divine presence in everyday matters or the inevitable moment of our death, is well represented in