Stompdown Killaz

Origins

Stompdown Killaz, better known as SDK, grew out of the Brookswood skatepark scene in Langley, British Columbia. The name was coined in 2005 by Capital Q (Quinn Leathem) and fellow writer Label, and early members included graffiti artists such as KeepSix, Lesen, Craver and Surgen. That same year Capital Q started filming the crew's painting missions and posting them to YouTube, and by 2007 SDK had put up dozens of graffiti videos and drawn local news coverage.

Ephin and the Music

Around 2006 the crew merged with Ephin, a Surrey clothing and music company founded in 2002 by Vision (Ryan Wiese). Their logo, a maple leaf behind a balaclava and crossed baseball bats, drawn by Capital Q with Surgen, became a streetwear staple. In 2010 the Surrey School District banned SDK clothing, saying the logo suggested gang violence, and the controversy only raised the crew's profile. On the music side, Snak the Ripper became SDK's lead voice; his 2008 "What's Street" video mixed rapping with live painting. Merkules came up as Snak's hype man and first recorded with him in 2011, and Caspian and Evil Ebenezer also appeared in the crew's videos.

Later Years

Through Snak, SDK linked up with Fredro Starr of Onyx in 2010, joining the 100 MAD network. The crew toured Canada, bought a bus for a cross-country run in 2012, and kept releasing graffiti films, the Die Slow DVDs and an SDK documentary series. Snak's Stealth Bomb Records, founded in 2013, became the main music outlet. Vice/Noisey published an oral history of the crew in 2016.