Robert Del Naja

Robert Del Naja (born 21 January 1965), also known as 3D, is a British artist, musician, singer and songwriter.

He emerged as a graffiti artist and member of the Bristol collective the Wild Bunch, and later as a founding member and sole consistent member of the band Massive Attack, with which he is still active.

Del Naja started rapping with the Wild Bunch in Bristol in the mid-1980s.

He is one of the founding members of Bristol trip hop collective Massive Attack, with Daddy G (Grant Marshall), Tricky (Adrian Thaws) and Andrew Vowles, as a music producer and the only vocalist to feature on all their albums and EPs.

He is regarded as the pioneer of the stencil graffiti movement and one of those who brought hip hop and graffiti culture from the United States to Bristol in the early 1980s.

He has previously been the subject of speculation that he is anonymous artist Banksy.

Del Naja's work has been featured on all of Massive Attack's record sleeves.

Del Naja was a graffiti artist before becoming a producer and vocalist, and was featured in the 1987 book Spraycan Art by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff and in the 1988 film Bombin', directed by Dick Fontaine, alongside fellow artist and future drum and bass pioneer Goldie.

Del Naja is credited as being the first graffiti artist in Bristol.

The band received critical acclaim with their first album Blue Lines, released in 1991.

In 1997–98, Del Naja was the band's main producer in the recording sessions that made Mezzanine, Massive Attack's most commercially successful album, selling nearly 4 million copies, with Neil Davidge as a sound engineer.

In addition to his work with Massive Attack, he provided vocals to "Invasion" on Unkle's album Never, Never, Land, and "Twilight" on War Stories.

Del Naja has co-written a number of film scores and tracks for films with Neil Davidge and with Euan Dickinson.

Since 2003, Del Naja has co-designed all of Massive Attack's lighting shows with UVA; the shows have been overtly political, dealing with local and international issues.

Del Naja and Massive Attack's producer Neil Davidge collaborated with United Visual Artists on the large scale installation Volume at London's V&A museum in 2006.

It consists of a field of 48 luminous, sound-emitting columns that respond to movement.

Visitors weave a path through the sculpture, creating their own unique journey in light and music.

Del Naja took part in a group show in 2007 called Warpaint at the Lazarides Gallery in London, featuring his art from the Unkle album War Stories.

"Herculaneum", the title track for Italian director Matteo Garrone's 2008 Palme d'Or winning film Gomorrah, based on the book by Roberto Saviano about organised crime in Naples, received the prize for best song at the David Di Donatello Awards.

He created an exhibition of flags at Massive Attack's Meltdown Festival on London's Southbank Centre in 2008.

The installation was called "Favoured Nations".

In the exhibition, alternative flags of the British Commonwealth were recoloured in the anarchist red and black and hung from the ceiling of the Royal Festival Hall main floor.

In 2009, he received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.

In a 2010 interview, Del Naja said "Painting is difficult for me because I'm colour blind. Back in the day, I had to label my spray cans with what colour they were because I couldn't tell. It's like the emperor's new clothes: [people] telling me it's great, and me pretending that's what I intended."

In December 2012, Del Naja released the first single of his new project called the Battle Box, which fuses music, art and discourse across one-off live events, exhibitions and exclusive vinyl releases.

He counted with the collaboration of artists such as Guy Garvey, Noel Gallagher, Jupiter Bokondji and the Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band.

Del Naja had his largest solo art show at the Lazarides gallery in central London from 24 May to 22 June 2013.

The show's content spanned a period of over twenty years and featured many of the art pieces that Del Naja created for Massive Attack.

Each piece, reinterpreted especially for the exhibition, was hand-printed and finished.

The show featured three one-off 'digital infinity mirrors' two of which contained phrases supplied by Reprieve extracted from drone pilot dialogues.

Del Naja and Grant DJ'd at the opening night on 23 May.

A multi-medium show conceived and designed by Del Naja and filmmaker Adam Curtis – in collaboration with United Visual Artists (UVA) – premiered in Manchester in July 2013.

The show featured a Curtis film, unofficially titled The Plan, which was projected onto a huge screen surrounding the audience.

The lighting and LED elements that surrounded the film and players were designed by Del Naja and UVA.

In December 2014, Del Naja donated ten unreleased music tracks to the Game Jam site Ludum Dare, for a game event taking place in December.

The songs will be used by the site developers to make soundtracks for the games.

This new music material is available for free download.

In February 2015, Del Naja and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke released the soundtrack for the documentary The UK Gold.

The songs are available for free download.

In 2015 he collaborated with Jean-Michel Jarre on the Electronica 1: The Time Machine album, resulting in the track "Watching You".