Hi, I'm Hannah, and I'm very excited to be hosting What in the World, a new daily podcast

from the BBC World Service, where we try to help you make sense of the world around you,

of the big things that are happening, the small things that are happening, and everything

in between.

Search for What in the World, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, and hit subscribe.

First from the BBC World Service, we're taking you back to the 1980s, when a young Black

graffiti artist, called Jean-Michel Baskier, first burst onto the New York art scene.

His work sold for thousands of dollars, but the more money he earned, the more he spent

on his drug addiction.

Baskier died 35 years ago on the 12th of August 1988.

In 2014, Tom Assument spoke to Patti Astor, who witnessed the artist's rise to fame.

It's February 1985, and in the bars of Soho in New York, hip-hop is all the rage.

Street art is in vogue.

The face of a young Black painter, Jean-Michel Baskier, is on the cover of The New York Times

magazine.

It was very punk rock before the whole kind of art hip-hop thing exploded.

It was kind of the art was sort of very similar to the punk rock flyers.

People would do weak pay stuff up on the street, and Jean-Michel was going to join that, too.

Galeriana Patti Astor had got to know Baskier at a nightclub.

It was going upstairs to the VIP room, of course, and he was on the stairway, and he had

that little dreadlocks hairdo, and I just started teasing him about his weird hairdo and kind

of flirting with him a little bit, and had no idea he was an artist.

...