Toward the end of high school, I swore off popular music. I was going to become a classical musician—a bassist—and decided that I needed to devote my attention to learning that repertoire. I didn’t have time to listen to music “for fun.” I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Temple University, which is located in the heart of North Philadelphia. As someone who grew up in rural, conservative, predominantly white Lancaster, PA (about two hours west of Philadelphia), much of what I experienced at Temple—both on and off campus—radically changed how I looked at the world. Toward the end of my bachelor’s degree, I started listening to popular music again, much of which happened to be hip-hop. There was something about the place I was in and the music that began to click for me. When I went to CUNY for my doctoral work, I took a class in popular music with Ellie Hisama and another one on rhythm with Stephen Blum. Both inspired me to dig deeper into rap music and hip hop culture, which I’ve done for some time.
The more I read, and listened, and taught, and reminisced, the more I realized that Philadelphia played—and continues to play—an important role in hip-hop’s history. As any true Philadelphian will tell you, whatever happens in New York City will always overshadow what happens in the City of Brotherly Love. I began thinking about what a revisionist history of hip-hop—one that is centered in Philadelphia—would look like about half a dozen years ago. It’s a big, sprawling project that I don’t have under control at all, but I’d like to start sharing some of it here.
* * *
Afrika Bambaataa, the legendary Bronx gang leader—turned DJ, posits four pillars of hip hop culture: writing (graffiti), b-boying and b-girling (break dancing), MCing, and DJing. He later added a fifth element, which is knowledge of the culture. Hip hop’s origin story has all four of these elements coming together synergistically in the South Bronx in the 1970s. While that may be true, none of these art forms was invented in the South Bronx: Joseph Schloss builds a convincing case that b-boying originated in Brooklyn; Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon notes that other elements of break dancing, such as popping and locking, started on the west coast.[1] Mobile DJs and MCing can both be traced to Jamaica, and Mark Katz indicates that mobile DJs may have been working New York City as early as 1959.[2] Modern graffiti got its start in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, and spread to New York City not long after that.[3]
Darryl McCray (b. 1953) was born in the Brewerytown neighborhood in North Philadelphia. He was raised by his mother and grandparents, and spent his middle-school years in the Youth Development Center, a correctional facility for young people. The kitchen staff at the YDC only served white bread: McCray longed for the cornbread that his southern grandmother would serve with meals and he would hound the staff to make cornbread for him. At one point, a member of the kitchen staff grew frustrated, shoved McCray toward one of the corrections officers, yelling “keep this damned cornbread out of my kitchen!”[4] Rather than take offense, McCray embraced his new nickname, “Cornbread.”
“CORNBREAD: WORLDS FIRST WRITER 1967,” photo from 215badlands.blogspot.com
In the YDC, McCray observed gang members writing the names of their gangs on the walls, tables, and any other open surface. This was common practice for gang members, who were very much concerned with marking the boundaries of their turf. Cornbread followed suit, writing his name wherever he could find the space. In doing so, Cornbread shifted the role of the “tag”—the stylized written name—from representing a gang and its turf to representing an individual and, ultimately, the tag itself. When Cornbread left the YDC, he returned to school and fell in love with a young woman named Cynthia Custuss. To get her attention, he began writing “Cornbread loves Cynthia” all over the school—hallways, her locker, desks, notebooks—and not long after that, along the route she’d take to school. Eventually, she noticed the same tag in one of his notebooks, and the two fell in love—a romance that was cut short when she moved away. Nevertheless, Cornbread continued to tag around his North Philadelphia neighborhood. He would tag buses, and along bus lines, and eventually he earned a bit of a reputation even beyond his neighborhood.
Bambaataa is well known for his role in reducing gang violence in the South Bronx. As the story goes, he was head of the Black Spades, one of the largest and most fearsome street gangs in the Bronx, but after a trip to Africa, he realized that violence might not be the answer to the challenges his community was facing. He gradually transformed the Black Spades into The Organization, and ultimately, the Zulu Nation. The pillars of hip hop could be used in competition to settle disputes non-violently: b-boy competitions, DJ battles, and eventually MC battles allowed rival gangs to air their grievances and everyone could return home safely at the end of the night (for the most part). Something similar happened in Philadelphia, before Bambaataa’s revelation: young people were forming what they called “social clubs” as alternatives to the gang lifestyle. These social clubs were closely modeled on fraternities and sororities: they were “more interested in having parties and meeting girls than holding down turf.”[5] Cornbread joined Delta Phi Soul and inspired others in the group to write. Tyson Mitman writes that these social clubs were not what we think of when we think of graffiti crews; rather, “they were social group[s] with a graffiti habit.”[6]
In 1969, Cornbread attended a party hosted by a social club in West Philadelphia. There he met Cool Earl, a young man who had been tagging his West Philly neighborhood. After Cornbread took out a pen and convinced Earl that he was who he said he was, Earl introduced him to some other West Philly taggers, including Chewy and Kool Klepto Kidd. The group, which also included Tity and other members of Delta Phi Soul, left the party to tag the city: Mitman calls it the first citywide graffiti movement.[7] More and more social clubs became involved in graffiti, and it wasn’t long until the first group dedicated solely to graffiti—the Hip City Swingers (HCS)—came into being. Mitman notes that membership was open to anyone regardless of race, gender, or neighborhood, as long as they were committed to making HCS the most well-known graffiti crew in the city. As a result of their diverse membership, the HCS helped move graffiti out of the poorer neighborhoods and into places like Center City and the suburbs. The HCS had high standards for membership: some of those rejected from HCS would go on to form other legendary graffiti crews—notably Klub International Wallwriters (KIW) and Lunatics At Writing (LAW1)—most of which outlived the HCS.[8]
As more and more people started writing, distinct styles began to emerge, and some of these characteristics remained characteristic of Philadelphia style long after it began to spread. “Tall print” or “tall hand” features letters that fill the vertical space on which they appear (or they go at least as high as the artist can reach). Tity began ending his tag with a peace sign; Cool Earl added arrows; others elongated letters, or rounded them off.[9] As writers and gang members began sharing space on walls, “gangster hand” developed. Gangster hand consisted of large letters, generally legible, and often with serifs. These modified fonts became more and more elaborate, and eventually gave rise to the “wicked.” Wickeds or “wickets” (if you pronounce it with a Philly accent) are uniquely Philadelphian, and difficult to describe. They are tags that possess a certain amount of energy in their intensely stylized letters, so much so that many non-writers simply can’t read them. Buford Youthward, a former graffiti artist in Philadelphia, describes them as follows:
Wickeds showcase the basic elements of hand and can. It's a marriage between technique and emotion. Wickeds require the adept skill and understanding of paint, caps, wind and surface. They also need to feed off of an energy (usually of the nervous, anxious nature). Some Wickeds laugh out loud, some explode, implode, some fade at the top, some at the bottom (in fact some writers even refer to Wickeds as Top-to-Bottoms). Others stab you in the back, spit in your face, loot the environment and have the capacity to make toxic waste look like Better Homes and Gardens' centerfolds.
Wickeds are like electric whipped barbed wire streaks. Some are closed with happy smiley faces, some with evil faces and some with cannibalistic masks. Ironically, some are closed with the traditional peace sign. What precedes this gesture is far from peaceful. The preceding is violent, razor-ribbon-lined cries of war. Wars within, wars without.[10]
From https://www.graffiti.org/faq/wickeds.html
Topcat, a master of gangster hand, moved with his family to New York City in 1968 or 1969.[11] There, he befriended early New York City writers like Taki 183—the subject of the famous 1971 piece in The New York Times—and the gangster hand style spread, eventually becoming known in New York as “Broadway Elegant.”[12] As New York styles evolved and became more widely known, they in turn influenced Philadelphia writers, who began directing their attention to larger spaces where tall bubble letters would be much more visible. Painting retaining walls on I-95 and I-76, the city’s two main thoroughfares, as well as the Amtrak and SEPTA lines allowed artists to become known to people who just happened to be passing through the city.[13] Philly writers called this “routing,” a term that was similar in spirit to what many others around the country called “bombing”: Mitman claims that the difference in terminology is significant largely because it represents Philly writers trying to distance themselves from their neighbors to the north.[14]
In an article in The New York Times, published only four days after the TAKI profile, City Councilman Joseph L. Zazyczny claims for Philadelphia the title of “graffiti capital of the world.” The article outlines measures that the city was considering in order to combat graffiti, many of which would ultimately be implemented under the leadership of mayors Wilson Goode and Ed Rendell, including banning spray paint, increased police surveillance, and the threat of prosecution. The article notes a similar uptick in graffiti activity in Chicago and Boston as well. But Philadelphia’s claim to the title would ultimately be backgrounded as graffiti increasingly became associated with New York City in the public consciousness. Charlie Ahearn’s film Wild Style appeared in theaters in 1983, and was followed the next year by Style Wars, which aired on PBS stations. Wild Style was the first film to present hip hop culture to mainstream audiences. While the story is scripted and lightly fictionalized, it did feature some important artists from the New York scene, including Lee Quinones and Sandra “Lady Pink” Fabara. The film’s title actually refers to a style of writing that features complex interlocking letters. Much like a wicked, wild style can be difficult for the uninitiated to decipher; however, wild style tends to use two-dimensional letters rather than single lines. The graffiti in the film comprises mostly pieces, whole cars, and murals, with occasional tagging.[15] Style Wars is more of a documentary, and it frames graffiti as a New York phenomenon—Philadelphia isn’t even mentioned—and it included murals and big, bright letters on subway cars.[16]
These films (and other contemporary media) promoted a very New York-centric view of graffiti to the general public: this is what graffiti looks like and you can find it on subway cars. Mitman outlines several ways in which conflict is handled in the graffiti community, all of which involve painting over someone else’s work in such a way that the original remains visible by degrees. In a sense, New York styles “backgrounded” Philadelphia’s: they painted over it for all intents and purposes, leaving parts of the original visible only to those in the know—backgrounding, writes Mitman, “serves as insult and erasure.”[17] The earliest books on graffiti—Norman Mailer’s The Faith of Graffiti (1972), Craig Castleman’s Getting Up (1982), and Henry Chalfant’s and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art (1984) deal only with New York City. Mailer’s essay contains a fleeting reference to Philadelphia, as he cites Richard Goldstein’s taxonomy of the different styles.[18] Top Cat also receives a brief mention in Getting Up, as the one who inspired Broadway Elegant.[19] In the 25th anniversary edition of Subway Art, when asked “Did you ever expect graffiti to spread worldwide?” Martha Cooper recalls: “I always thought that graffiti was a phenomenon that could only happen in New York City. […] I thought this situation, combined with the fact that New York was the center of the art world, had created a set of conditions that gave rise to subway graffiti but that couldn’t be duplicated elsewhere.”[20]
None the less, Philadelphia writers remained committed to the tag and the wicked, preserving and evolving the unique identity of their styles. By the early 1980s, Philadelphia was no longer the graffiti capital of the world; it was, however, well on its way to earning a different accolade from the art world: it was becoming the “City of Murals.”
NOTES:
[1] Joseph Schloss, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), chapter 7; Jorge Pabon, “Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip-Hop Dance,” in Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. Ed. Jeff Chang (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2006), 18. Pabon makes the point that popping and locking emerged from a distinct cultural movement, but that the media began conflating the east- and west-coast dance styles in the early 1980s. Imani Kai Johnson also points out the west-coast origins of popping and locking, noting not only that they were distinct from east-coast breakdancing, but that many also conflated popping and locking into “pop-locking”: see “Hip-Hop Dance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, ed. Justin Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 22-23.
[2] See, for instance, Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), chapter 2; Mark Katz, Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip Hop DJ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 26-27.
[3] Tyson Mitman defines “modern graffiti” as “the repeated stylized writing of a name or symbol on public space in an effort to gain recognition both for the name or the symbol and the individual producing it”: see Tyson Mitman, “Rebels, Artists and the Reimagined City: An Ethnographic Examination of Graffiti Culture in Philadelphia,” Ph.D. Diss, Drexel University, 2015, 9. This is to distinguish the subject under consideration from cave paintings, “Kilroy was here” signs, and the like.
[4] Mitman 10.
[5] Mitman 13.
[6] Mitman 14.
[7] Mitman 15.
[8] Summarized from Mitman 21; 24-27. The HCS also lent their name to a Philly-based rap group in the 1990s, comprising the brothers Eric and Antrion Freeman and David Williams. They released a single titled “I’m the Man” that was released on B-Brothers Platinum Records in 1992.
[9] Mitman 16.
[10] https://www.graffiti.org/faq/wickeds.html
[11] Mitman notes that there is no agreement on the date (18).
[12] Mitman 18.
[13] Mitman 36.
[14] Mitman 59.
[15] A “piece” (short for “masterpiece”) is a painting, typically involving several colors; “whole car” is a piece that covers an entire subway car ; and a “mural” is a large-scale work composed of several pieces.
[16] Mitman 32.
[17] Mitman 114. It’s worth noting that, according to Mitman, complete erasure (buffing) in the world of graffiti beefs is uncommon, because it is the modus operandi of the government.
[18] “Broadway style, these long slim letters, was brought from Philadelphia by a guy named Top Cat”; Norman Mailer, “The Faith of Graffiti,” Esquire (May 1974), 79.
[19] Craig Castleman, Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 55.
[20] Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, Subway Art. 25th Anniversary Ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), 124.