Design and screenprint for local musician HKrush.

HIP HOP January 31st 2012

I was going through my music not too long ago and started to think about how this whole graffiti thing started for me. Doing graffiti has taken me many of places over the years and I've seen writers from all walks of life. I've kicked it with "rich writers", the ones that use only the finest paint brands and the illest colors. They're the ones that will never need to worry about their financial state a day in their life. I've chilled with "poor writers", the ones that are struggling just to pay for food and rent. Or the ones that live in homeless shelters and still manage to stay active. I know hundreds of writers who affiliate graffiti with gang banging and fall into the subcategory of a "tagbanger". I know countless writers who only listen to hip hop music and attend all of the local "open mic" and "spoken word" gatherings. I've met and hung out with numerous punk rock individuals who mosh and can get rowdy as fuck. The newest and most prevalent as far as trends in the Bay Area go is the "hipster writer", wearing tight jeans and riding fixed gear bikes. Out of all of these choices of lifestyle the one thing that remains constant is the fact that there is no correct or incorrect way to live your life as a writer.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other night about music and graffiti, and how/if they can be somehow tied together. I brought up the movie Style Wars (which I probably haven't seen in fifteen years now). If by some odd reason you haven't seen it yet, it's a movie documenting the subway movement that took place in New York in the 70's and 80's. If you acknowledged this theory then the act of using different colors along with techniques to create an artistic graffiti piece started in New York sometime back in the 70's. It also means hip hop music and all other aspects of the culture are directly related to graffiti, regardless of what type of music you listen to or how you feel about the Hip Hop Culture today.

As I put more thought into it I can draw some similarities to how we as "people" exist today. How did we ever get the culture and traditions that we were raised with and have become so accustomed to. What I'm trying to say is that we all didn't just wake up one day and decide "I think I'm going to go to church", or "I'm a Christian" or "I'm a Muslim" or whatever it may be. These traditions (in this case religion) have been created and in most instances altered over the span of thousands of years. Over time ideas have been conceived and changes have been incorporated. Cultures have progressed and things have evolved.

When I think about religion, every one that comes to mind revolves around a book or has some sort of instruction manual. It's most logical to believe that every separate religion didn't conceive this idea independently, ideas were used and methods evolved. The Zoroastrian religion dated far back before Judaism and it stated that there was one God, and a prophet by the name of Zoroaster came to deliver the message. Then you have Judaism which worship one God in their own unique way. After that you have Christianity which acknowledge and reference Judaism in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible. Years later the muslims believed that the prophet Mohammed came to deliver the message about Allah but also recognize Jesus as "Isa" in the Quran. Of course behind war there will always be money, but the saddest part is that the majority of war throughout the existence of man has been over religion. Something that is supposed to be so holy and pure can create such a violent and deadly mess. But, the main point I was trying to make is that whether or not you consciously acknowledge that one or the other exists almost becomes irrelevant, because just by acknowledging your own belief, or the way that you see things, is actually subconsciously acknowledging what existed before, and over time has evolved.

Aside from religion I can give you one more example before the subject has been beat to death. Being a California native, I've grown up and been around Mexican people and the Mexican culture my entire life. From the food to the days of celebration I've seen so much of the culture and it's traditions. But when I really analyze who the people are and where the people came from I come to the realization that the Mexican culture is something that has evolved from previous existence. It's like if you were to choose to acknowledge that you were of Mexican decent but were to deny that you were of Spanish ancestry or Indigenous roots. Just by recognizing yourself as Mexican is acknowledging the existence of the Spanish or Natives that occupied the land before you.

I know you might be wondering how all of these theories tie into what I was talking about earlier. About how I was going through my music not too long ago and how this whole graffiti thing started for me. Well first off I want to say no matter what religion or what ethnicity you are makes no difference to me and all content I used was an example to make a point about how culture can evolve. You see a good friend of mine told me several years ago when we met that graffiti was not hip hop and has nothing to do with hip hop, and in fact they were two separate entities. In a way I agree with him that the act of doing Graffiti is not Hip Hop music. How far Graffiti as an independent culture has come over the past forty years is phenomenal, and all of the different walks of life that are affiliated with it. But to me, recognizing yourself as a graffiti writer in the twenty-first century is acknowledging the culture in which the art form emerged from some 40 odd years ago. Hip Hop.

I started listening to underground hip hop back in 1997, and the movement that was taking place at the time was different from anything that I'd ever seen before. Back in the nineties when you thought of "underground music" it was something that was truly underground. The majority of kids had no clue about it, music stores weren't as liberal as they are now. Other then a couple of scattered shops in the bay area it was hard to find music from the artists you listened too. If you wanted an album you had to be at the show or really do your homework.

I remember putting a new cassette in my walkman everyday with nothing but graffiti on my mind as I walked to and from school back in my day. When I think of the underground movement that I was able to witness first hand I can't help but be thankful that I was around at a time when fresh emcees were flourishing. I took a couple of pictures of my cassette collection not too long ago and wanted to give a shout to the generation of emcees who helped pave way for the graffiti career that I've been blessed with experiencing.