I spoke in a earlier post about hip hop being an unstoppable force. On this weeks soapbox I would like to get more specific and signify the one aspect of hiphop that may be the most unstoppable.....Grafitti. As one of the four pillars of hip hop, throught the years, Grafitti has stayed true to its roots. And as the Brooklyn Museum of Art holds an entire exhibit especialy catered to a cornerstone of one of the most influential cultural movements the world has seen, it seems obvious to me that in the purple diamond wearing, coke pushing, blood stained world of rap music the art.....I REPEAT THE ART OF GRAFITTI might be the only pillar that true fans and historians of the culture have left to stand on.
AHHH the B-Boy... The jack of all trades, the renaissance men of hip hop. For those lay people who have no idea, a B-Boy, was a bright and gifted young man (and later on woman)that encompassed all four pillars of hip hop. DJ-ing, Breakdancing, Emcee-ing,and Tagging, with those four powers combined you were A B-BOY!!!!!! Sounds glamourous doesn't it? And oh how glamourous it was, if you look back at the pictures from the late 70's and early 80's you can see the purity of it all. Young people in the inner-city reacting to the pressures and politics of life at that time with social commentary and an individualism that made them stand out from the workers in the slums and separated them from the suits on Wall Street.(As if the alarming poverty and drug trafficing weren't separation enough)To be on the cutting edge of a movment so strong is usually a burden to those innovators with enough guile to buck the status quo. However, the unique quality about the hip hop culture was that they were pretty much left to their own devices. (which is very rare for a big group of minorities all doing the same thing at the same time)I say pretty much, because for all those that were making that racket with their parents turntables, and those reusing the cardboard boxes from the trash heap to do those funny dances....There was that special breed, the trobulemakers defacing public property. It seemed ironic on so many levels that New York City; this white washed metropolis of brick and mortar, this symbol of american prowess, was also one of the biggest centers for crime and corruption. And for the first time, people could litteraly see writing on the wall. Writings, that would seemingly appear overnight. No one knew exactly how, or when, but anyone who could read knew why. The messages would appear in such vivd color and in such gargantuan size, and in so many numbers that they could not be ignored. And so... the war on terror insued. Fueled by the seminal graffiti documentary "Style Wars" THE MAYOR OF THE BIG APPLE put the hammer down on grafitti declaring it as crime punishable by fines and jailtime.
Fast forward a quarter of a century. How much of a B-Boy is there left to be? Rap went from being ignored to being villianized then accepted to then being raped, pillaged and sold out by its own kind, the last time I checked break dancing was being used in car commericals and sitcoms, and every white boy from suburbia copped a set of technics and became DJ Grand Master Techno/House. So that leaves us with old faithful, our dedicated creatures of the night creating street murals in the shadows with nothing but an ipod in their ear, a can of Krylon in their hand, and pure passion in their hearts. Still willing to risk spending a couple hundered bucks and a couple of hours in a holding cell to see that paint glisten off an alley wall or a train car by the light of day.
So being that the ART...YES THE ART OF GRAFFITI has an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art(maybe guggenheim next time?), saying that graffiti has come a long way would be a vast understatement. EAT YOUR HEART OUT EDDIE KOCH!!!!
***The Backpacker Steps Off the Soapbox***
for a link to a feature on the actual exhibit click the title of the post.
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