Wild Style (1983) was a film that documented the real world of hip hop before most people even knew what hip hop was. This movie brings about the four crucial elements of hip hop - emceeing, graffiti, break-dancing, and deejaying. These features are the backdrop to the story of a graffiti artist named Raymond who lives in the South Bronx that goes by the name “Zoro”, who is played by well-known New York graffiti artist Lee Quinones. The movie goes through the tribulations of his life and relationship with Rose, while showing some of the historical aspects of hip hop.
This movie took place after graffiti had been so staunchly looked down upon. Craig Castleman supports this in his article “The Politics of Graffiti”, when he goes through a timeline of all of the policies that Mayor Jon V. Lindsay established in 1972 to get rid of graffiti, while the graffiti artists continued to do what they loved (21-28). Graffiti writing is not just an art to these people, it is a way of life. This is shown in Wild Style, when Hector says that there is nothing out there for Raymond and he replies "Yes there is (looks at graffiti, then back at Hector)...this." Wild Style hearkens back to a Golden Age when graffiti made sense. In the early eighties, New York City was a brutal and fairly dismal place to live. It made sense to the “taggers”, it was a part of their life and a way to improve the streets of New York. In “The Politics of Graffiti”, Richard Goldstein stated graffiti to be “the first genuine teenage street culture since the fifties. In that sense, it’s a lot like rock ‘n’ roll” (25). For some, it might even be about getting that “runners high” type of feeling that they cannot get from anything else. Raymond explains this in Wild Style by...
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Through the influence of the movie and the articles together, one can tell that hip hop has grown greatly as a style of music and a culture since the 70s.
Works Cited
Castleman, Craig. "The Politics of Graffiti." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 21-30. Print.
Flores, Juan. "Puerto Rocks: Rap, Roots, and Amnesia." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 69-86. Print.
Ford, Robert Jr. "Jive Talking N.Y. DJs Rapping Away in Black Discos." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 43-44. Print.
Wild Style, Dir. Charlie Ahearn. Perf. Easy A.D., A.J. and Almighty K.G. Rhino, 1983. Film.
Perry, Imani. 2004. Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hip-Hop became characterized by an aggressive tone marked by graphic descriptions of the harshness and diversity of inner-city life. Primarily a medium of popular entertainment, hip-hop also conveys the more serious voices of youth in the black community. Though the approaches of rappers became more varied in the latter half of the 1980s, message hip-hop remained a viable form for addressing the problems faced by the black community and means to solve those problems. The voices of "message" hip...
On February 26, 1973, Mayor John V. Lindsay’s graffiti task force drafted an anti-graffiti plan that featured “increased security measures in those areas of the city where security may deter vandalism.” As crime increased in majority black and Latino neighborhoods, police detectives associated graffiti in these areas with the violent crimes surrounding it. Technically, the police had reason to prosecute graffiti as a crime; the term graffiti addressed the illegal defacing of public and private properties. When Bernie Jacobs of the New York City Transit Police asserted that, “graffiti is not an art...I can sure as hell tell you [it’s] a crime,” Style Wars viewers see how vehemently detectives disparaged graffiti work and writers. Despite the fact that writers of color fought hard for free expression, racial profiling continued to constrain the process of getting the materials needed to make graffiti. Writer Skeme stated that, only “niggas who be high when they come from school...break windows,” and then commit violent crime; nevertheless, a white youth commented that “everybody [thought]” black and Puerto Rican kids wanted to rob aerosols and spray-paint from stores. Even though most graffiti writers of color did not commit violent crime, police detectives still labeled graffiti writers of color who wanted to buy artistic
Within the impoverished urban streets arose a youth culture captivated by infamy and self-pride. A youth culture virtually undistinguishable from members of modern society with a passion, setting them apart from the community. The members of this underground subculture could be your next-door neighbor, your son or daughter, or the contractor repairing your roof, yet you would have no idea that they strive to “bomb” objects and surfaces found in everyday life. It is the subtle differences that distinguish a graffiti artist from the average member of society, such as their, mindset, desires, speech and active lifestyle.
As the hip-hop battle rages on in the background somewhere between the black literati, consumers and observers, I stand objectively nodding religiously to Lupe Fiasco as he creates a narrative surrounding personified life of a housing complex each component, the legs, the chest, a different facet of living in the hood. Some would pose Lupe as a Hip-Hop alternative, glorifying his intellectualism and political consciousness, at the expense of demonizing other less academically articulate rap artists. Maybe they deserve it. Maybe they are ill educated and uncultured. But does that delegitimize their message? Understanding the messages of many gangsta rap artists is a complex task for those whose lived experiences don’t relate. We need to find an alternative way to comprehend and critique the music that we dismiss as garbage. What are rappers really saying? Michal P. Jefferies’ work Thug Life, provides us with alternative tools to answer this question. I seek to further explore Jefferies “complex cool” and how it allows for a thug masculinity to include love and other emotional sentiments.
Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that emerged from the dilapidated South Bronx, New York in the early 1970’s. The area’s mostly African American and Puerto Rican residents originated this uniquely American musical genre and culture that over the past four decades has developed into a global sensation impacting the formation of youth culture around the world. The South Bronx was a whirlpool of political, social, and economic upheaval in the years leading up to the inception of Hip-Hop. The early part of the 1970’s found many African American and Hispanic communities desperately seeking relief from the poverty, drug, and crime epidemics engulfing the gang dominated neighborhoods. Hip-Hop proved to be successful as both a creative outlet for expressing the struggles of life amidst the prevailing crime and violence as well as an enjoyable and cheap form of recreation.
Light, Alan. "About a Salary or Reality? – Rap’s Recurrent Conflict." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 137-146. Print.
Negus, Keith. "The Business of Rap: Between the Street and the Executive Suite." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 525-540. Print.
Jeffries, M. P. (2011). Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-hop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Throughout American history there has always been some form of verbal acrobatics or jousting involving rhymes within the Afro-American community. Signifying, testifying, shining of the Titanic, the Dozens, school yard rhymes, prison ?jail house? rhymes and double Dutch jump rope rhymes, are some of the names and ways that various forms of raps have manifested. Modern day rap music finds its immediate roots in the toasting and dub talk over elements of reggae music (George, 1998)....
In Total Chaos, Jeff Chang references Harry Allen, a hip hop critic and self-proclaimed hip hop activist. Harry Allen compares the hip hop movement to the Big Bang and poses this complex question: “whether hip-hop is, in fact a closed universe-bound to recollapse, ultimately, in a fireball akin to its birth-or an open one, destined to expand forever, until it is cold, dark, and dead” (9). An often heard phase, “hip hop is dead,” refers to the high occurrence of gangster rap in mainstream hip hop. Today’s hip hop regularly features black youths posturing as rich thugs and indulging in expensive merchandise. The “hip hop is dead” perspective is based on the belief that hip hop was destined to become the model of youth resistance and social change. However, its political ambitions have yet to emerge, thus giving rise to hip hops’ criticisms. This essay will examine the past and present of hip hop in o...
Graffiti has been on the rise in popularity since its beginnings fifty years ago. Danielle Crinnion provides a brief history of graffiti arguing that “Philadelphia
Dixon, Travis L., TaKeshia Brooks. “Rap Music and Rap Audiences: Controversial Themes, Psychological Effects and Political Resistance.” Perspectives. 7 April 2009. .
Graffiti is a form of art that people use to express themselves and to convey various messages to people in a particular community. In the movie "Graffiti Verite':. One of the graffiti artist explained that his purpose in doing graffiti is that it allows him to "express his anger' on the wall. Another kid by the name of "Jipsie" said that graffiti is a "form of growth". There were several different explanations that artists shared as well as several different reasons why they like graffiti. The common theme among the graffiti artist and taggers was that graffiti is simply a form of self-expression (Bryan). At the end of the film one tagger made a comment and said, "graffiti is not vandalism, but it is a beautiful crime". This comment did not make sense to me. Committing a crime, a hideous act, is not a beautiful thing to do by any means. Graffiti does not mean people can go around and draw and spray paint on other peoples property. Regardless of what types of graffiti are being expressed by the tagger, this type of self expression is considered vandalism when people decide to draw, destroy, or violate any persons property without consent. As a result of taggers committing the crime of vandalism, property owners, concerned citizens, and law enforcement officers spend too much time, money, and energy trying to put an end to the unlawful act of vandalism.
15 March 2014 Springer.com. Riley. Springer:’’ Rap and Hip-Hop Genre Today’’. April 2004 15 March 2014 Springer.com Ruiz, Jonathan. Cross-Cultural Rhetoric.