Graffiti has an interesting relationship to the broader world of hip-hop: It's part of the culture, but also in a weird way a stepchild of the culture.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC.
My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.
Graffiti writers were the most interesting people in hip hop. They were the mad scientists, the mad geniuses, the weird ones.
I was a rapper and a DJ, and if you wanted to be involved in hip-hop, you had to be involved in the sonic, the kinetic and the visual aspects. The visual was graffiti.
The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.
Graffiti is usually a protest - ink on walls - or has a reason for being naughty or aggressive.
I think when people say 'real hip-hop,' they want it more buried in the streets. They want it more connected to the streets and the grime and the roughness of the streets. They don't want the fluff.
I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.
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