The culture of hip hop has four areas of contact… Rap, dancing, DJing & graffiti! All known to many but never grouped as a culture or embraced equally.
Graffiti aka vandalism, the dark arts. Weaponry; spray can colours, a public audience and the world being your canvas. Men prepared to die for their art; kamikaze artists going against the state…
We have all seen graffiti; sneered, grinned, smiled, looked twice, shaken our heads and more. Only thing is, we never get to settle on an idea this street art evokes.
Its always something we see on city walls, random public vandalism and never seem to notice the skills involved. But my thoughts aren’t about that because I always see a person who was bothered enough to draw and risk imprisonment. Even worse these artist sign their work; tag it. Arrogance; talent and balls of steel are compulsory for this lifestyle.
The hip hop culture is characterised by rough hooligans calling themselves artists. What we do isn’t socially acceptable but we do it and succeed in saying ‘fcuk the system’. But little do we know how much the system/society has opened up for the weird and wonderful.
The day graffiti isn’t called a street art and accepted as an art form that generates cash flow will be the day hip hop as a whole gets to share its beauty and depth in full.
@movehiphop