Jean-Michel Basquiat went from sleeping on park benches and spray-painting cryptic graffiti under the tag SAMO to selling paintings for millions and dining with Andy Warhol — all before he turned twenty-five. His furious, layered canvases of skulls, crowns, and anatomical diagrams channeled the rage and brilliance of a young Black artist crashing through the white-dominated art world at full speed. He was dead of a heroin overdose at twenty-seven.

This episode traces Basquiat from his Haitian-Puerto Rican Brooklyn childhood through the downtown Manhattan art scene, his complicated friendship with Warhol, and the meteoric career that made him one of the most expensive artists in history.

• Basquiat's Brooklyn childhood, the car accident that gave him Gray's Anatomy, and the birth of SAMO
• His explosive entrance into the galle ...