The Talented Janniz Antoniou

Photographed By: Ellinor Forje

Janniz Antoniou speaks about his son without hesitation. The words come simply, almost as a fact rather than a declaration, that kind of joy doesn’t translate, he comes first, everything else follows. It is less a statement than a principle, one that quietly frames everything else.

As a child, he watched a classmate, Joakim Olofsson, draw with ease. Trying to match that fluency, he once submitted an Easter egg illustration for a school assignment. His teacher didn’t believe he had made it himself. The low grade lingered, not for the mark, but for what it implied, that authenticity could be mistaken for imitation.

Two films from the early ’80s, "Beat Street" and "Breakdance, The Movie", set something in motion. They opened the door to breakdancing, electric boogie, DJing, and eventually graffiti. In Lund, he became part of NSA, New School Authority, alongside Core and Pike. They moved through the city in parallel rhythms, others dancing in the streets while they marked the walls.

By the late ’80s and early ’90s, his focus shifted toward music. Working with some of Sweden’s strongest musicians, he became a familiar presence in Lund. Still, there were limits, some self-imposed, others shaped by the culture around him. While peers established themselves within Swedish hip-hop, Janniz held back, drawn to sounds he did not yet claim publicly.

“The street culture was conservative, at least then,” he says. Artists like Depeche Mode belonged to a different register, one he kept to himself. Over time, that restraint gave way. House music entered his sets, though the foundation remained rooted in soul.

The shift was gradual. What held him was not uncertainty, but something more persistent.

Fear.

Of failing. Of succeeding.

He does not dwell on a turning point, but he returns to a line that stayed with him, “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there.” It marks less a moment than a quiet recalibration.

Around 2007, painting returned. A new apartment, blank white walls, and a canvas untouched for two decades became the catalyst. “The graff came back,” he says.

His work now is abstract, layered, and open-ended. He keeps his process largely to himself. “I still have to work on my technique,” he says, more as a working principle than a critique.

Hip-hop, in his view, extended far beyond music. “No other subculture has influenced fashion in the same way,” he says. What once signaled belonging has since dissolved into the mainstream. “The exclusivity had its appeal.”

He has seen that world up close, fashion shows, club circuits, the constant churn, but keeps a distance. “Jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers, that’s enough,” he says. His attention returns, consistently, to music. Still, he follows his sister-in-law, Fernanda Palmeiro, in her field with a kind of quiet respect, “her game,” as he calls it.

There remains a sense of searching, not for direction, but for footing. “A man has to be rational to reach his goals,” he says. It is a measured thought, steady rather than absolute, much like the path he continues to shape.

Chronicle
’83–87 Breakdance, Graffiti
’88–93 Hip-Hop Production, DJ
’93–97 House, DJ
’98–06 Hip-Hop and R&B Production, Club Promoter, DJ
’07– Progressive Production, Art