Graffiti Hip Hop Culture

Several hip hop scholars and graffiti artists agree that this is when the graffiti movement melded with the hip hop movement.

Graffiti hip hop culture. The link between hip hop and graffiti evolved as a competition much like the dance moves of the hip hop culture. Hip hop punk graffiti the 1980 s saw graffiti and street art become inextricably linked with the emerging hip hop scene that helped to spread the graffiti culture worldwide. Another development of graffiti was its connection to the hip hop culture. In the words of hip hop scholar jeff chang there is still a raging debate especially amongst older graffiti writers as to whether hip hop and graffiti are linked. An age old practice graffiti holds special significance as one of the elements of hip hop culture. They turn to graffiti because they believe that hip hop style is the closest representation of who they are as a person and the background that they have gadsby ch 3. About ten years after its inception around 1970 graffiti culture started to be linked with hip hop a concept coined by the media to facilitate the commercialisation of graffiti and other contemporary cultures.

But once hip hop was presented with graffiti in movies such as wild style and style wars history took a different turn. Graffiti began to show up on subways in new york and other cities as a form of expression of the culture who listened to rap music. Graffiti as an urban art form has existed since at least the 1950s but began developing in earnest in the late 1960s and flourished during the 1970s. Graffiti in hip hop began as a way of tagging for one s crew gang and developed during the 1970s on the subways of new york and later expanded to the city walls themselves. Although graffiti was in some ways the bastard step child to hip hop as villorente calls it it served as visual inspiration to the culture mirroring the sensibilities portrayed in the music. This artificial link is still seen in the media and therefore also in the mainstream view of graffiti. Although graffiti exists outside of and began before hip hop the two are linked in many ways.

Graffiti distiguished by tags or distinguishing marks of the originators and a way to distinguish or stand out from other graffiti artists. Graffiti artists who are drawn to the art form for individual expression are much more creative with their work. Many writers do not identify with the hip hop culture but a relatively large proportion of graffiti does come through hip hop.