Cover Me

   In 1979, The Sugar Hill Gang released Rapper's Delight, the first hip-hop single to break into the top 40. The cover art for the album and the single were both rooted in graffiti.

   Rapper's Delight is widely credited for bringing the hip-hop phenomenon from its insulated community to the masses.

  

 The early album art for most hip-hop records was largely graffiti based, as evidenced here by a legendary Philly emcee, Schooly D...

and by another groundbreaking group, EPMD...

   Since these groups were all marketing their products to urban youths, they understood that the way to get their attention was to market their product with familiar art. This also was one of the ways that graffiti became legitimized; many advertising executives saw the art form as an effective way to target this consumer group.

Code of the Streets

I write a rhyme in graffiti and / every show you see me in...
Deep concentration 'cause I'm no comedian...

   Rakim wrote the lyrics to I Ain't No Joke in 1987 during the height of the hip-hop revolution. He was one of the pioneers of the art form and understood it as well as any. When he composed his legendary poetry, it looked something like this...

   The Four Elements of Hip-Hop were all interconnected. The dj's & emcees were focused on making music that you could dance to. The dancers brought cardboard cutouts to break on filled with graffiti. The graffiti artists were able to share space on the stage with the acts performing at some of the biggest shows in the history of music. The culture belonged to everyone and no one was more important than the other.



   Movies like Beat Street...

and Wild Style...

...brought the culture from the streets to the big screen and introduced the masses to all of The Elements at the same time and showed their interconnectedness. All of the people involved were able to express themselves through art and continued to further the culture.

A little history...

Cornbread once told the story that he tagged an elephant at the zoo

     

   Cornbread and Cool Earl are the two men most commonly associated with beginning the phenomenon of graffiti art in America. They are two young Philadelphians that got started in the early 1960's, trying to get attention from girls in their neighborhood.

   Once they got started, their legend grew all over town, eventually spreading to New York City. Some of the first taggers in NY were  Taki 183, Julio 204, Frank 207, and Joe 136. These four started an intense rivalry amongst themselves and sparked the same intensity all around the city once other youngsters joined into the practice of tagging. 

   Graffiti was used to make political statements (by unions, community politicians, etc) and to mark gang territory. There began to be some distinctions made in bombing styles in order for the artists to make names for themselves.

The use of crowns, stars, wild styles of writing and and changes in scale marked some of the changes that would come about in the early 80's. Another crucial development was the linking of the artform to the hip-hop movement. it brought a sense of greater legitimacy to both genres while allowing for a crossover effect. Those who lived the life of a bomber might not know what it was like to be a b-boy and vice versa.  

From the Top

  



   When I was a teenager, the hip-hop phenomena came into being. Even though graffiti was not singular to hip-hop, the intensity of the four basic elements of the culture...the vocals, the music, the fashion and the art...fascinated me and I became a true believer. The art was based in the street, as were the rest of the traditions, and I was hooked as soon as I started putting pen to paper. 

I was never a pro, but I can get down a little

 I used to write with a couple buddies of mine all the time. I never was one to hit the walls with high intensity, but I knew plenty of cats who did. My buddy "CHIEF" was a notorious West Philly tagger...

   

   No wall in Philly was safe from cats like these. I could go anywhere, Manayunk, Cheltenham, South, West and North Philly and see some of the graffiti that all my boys lit up the city with.





   Greg Davis was a cat that my brother ran with. He went to Central with us and had a tagging crew called KCD. He used to write under the name T-Bone, but his style isn't what we're going to talk about here (even though his tags were vicious). He was one of the pioneers of the Philadelphia graffiti scene and there was a documentary made that documents some of his exploits. There are a number of the more well known artists spotlighted here, including Cornbread, the self-proclaimed "first graffiti artist".

                 The 80's is the decade that grew me up and this culture was at the center of it.