" (Cattleman 106).
New York City conceived graffiti and it will always be the capital and cultural center of graffiti." (Powers, 39) When graffiti first started coming up, it was done predominantly by Puerto Rican and African American youths from poor inner-city neighborhoods. Now, graffiti has attracted people, male and female, of all races, religions and nationalities from the broadest types of backgrounds from all socio-economic classes, and you can regularly find writers ranging in age from 8 to their 30s (Powers, 92).
As with anything that changes overtime, graffiti has developed over the years in style, skill and creativity and is always changing and pushing the buttons. Musicians from the 1960 to the present sing about the art and history of graffiti. In Simon & Garfunkel's, folk rock song, "Sounds of Silence" they say, "The words of the prophets were written on the subway walls and the tenement halls- In more recent hip-hop/rap songs graffiti is still talked about. In Cormega's song "Testament", he says, "So never questioned it/ poetry I'm manifestin' it/ Graffiti filled testament". You can see how times change, but graffiti was and still is a form of art and expressing ones self. .
Haze explains, "There's no one history of graffiti. It depends on what borough you lived in, what year you were born in, and what lines you rode.The best you will ever get is a personal history of graffiti." (qtd. in Dennant 21).
Graffiti is joined to hip-hop at the hip and arose with it in New York and Philadelphia. As you saw references to graffiti are made very often in hip-hop songs. Graffiti represents many of the same impulses and techniques visually that hip hop represents in sound. The idea of using pre-recorded tracks and rapping over them (a technique that originates in Jamaica) is a cheap and relatively simple way to make music: analogous to spray paint. And the rapper repeating his name and bragging on his abilities and threatening his enemies in crews: all of that is analogous to the tag.