(AllHipHop News) Fabolous is best known as the rapper from Breevort Houses in Bed-Stuy, but some of his fans may not be aware the creator of The Young OG Project album studied as a visual artist as well. during a tour of the Brooklyn Museum’s “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” exhibition, Fab spoke with Billboard about his teenage days as an illustrator.

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“Before I was a musician, I drew,” said Fabolous. “The housing projects in Brooklyn weren’t much of a canvas, people didn’t know that I had it in me – but I actually went to an art and design high school.”

The experience of viewing Jean-Michel Basquiat’s writings caused the “Lituation” rhymer to draw comparisons between the late New York based graffiti and abstract artist and modern Hip Hop performers.

“[Basquiat’s] composition books, those are the same books I used for school,” Fabolous says. “And even though he didn’t think of himself as a poet, a lot of rappers write down ideas and verses in the same way he did.”