Graffiti

Graffiti is NOT one of the four elements of Hip Hop. This is chronologically impossible. "Graffiti" was first born as "Writin' " in NYC in 1969-70, a decade before rap music reached NYC in the late 70s. Hip Hop which began in the early 80s, can not include "graffiti" as one of its elements, because Writin' or Graffiti surfaced decade before Hip Hop. Hip Hop is really the last element of Writin'. Graffiti is the plural of the italian "graffito." Graffito in english means to scratch or scribble. What you saw on the NYC subways in the early 70s were no "scribbles. Instead, those of us who started Writin' would call our large letter pieces, masterpieces. We were WRITERS who WROTE OUR NAMES.We were not "graffiti artists." Every time a new face would appear on the scene, we would always ask two questions, "you write?" and "what you wrtie?" Not "do you do graffiti?" It was the NYT who first baptized an entire Culture with the denigrating term "graffiti" in 1971. Why this denigration? The only correct answer to this question is: Racism. If our last names would have been been Rockefeller, Trump, Bloomberg or Kennedy, instead of Ramirez, Jones or Delgado, then those same powers that be would have named the new Culture with a more formal name. Instead of "graffiti", the NYT would have referred to it as "avant garde pop something art." But because it was invented by the children of the Working Class, the powers that be saw fit to denigrate the entire Culture with "graffiti."