Hip-Hop United’s mission statement is to establish a universal symbol of cultural identity.
THE OFFICIAL HIP-HOP FLAG
The RED is for the BLOOD, The GREEN is for the LAND, The BLUE is for the WATER, The GOLD is for the SOURCE, The TRANSMITTER.
Origins and the old school
Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the termhip-hoprefers to a complexculturecomprisingfour elements:deejaying, or “turntabling”; rapping, also known as “MCing” or “rhyming”;graffitipainting, also known as “graf” or “writing”; and “B-boying,” whichencompasseship-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopherCornel Westdescribed as “postural semantics.” (A fifth element, “knowledge of self/consciousness,” is sometimes added to the list of hip-hop elements, particularly by socially conscious hip-hop artists and scholars.) Hip-hop originated in the predominantlyAfrican Americaneconomically depressed South Bronx section ofNew York Cityin the late 1970s. As the hip-hop movement began at society’s margins, its origins are shrouded inmyth,enigma, and obfuscation.
Graffiti andbreak dancing, the aspects of the culture that first caught public attention, had the least lasting effect. Reputedly, the graffiti movement was started about 1972 by a Greek American teenager who signed, or “tagged,” Taki 183 (his name and street, 183rd Street) on walls throughout the New York City subway system. By 1975 youths in theBronx, Queens, andBrooklynwere stealing into train yards under cover of darkness to spray-paint colourful mural-size renderings of their names, imagery from underground comics and television, and evenAndy Warhol-like Campbell’s soup cans onto the sides of subway cars. Soon, influential art dealers in the United States, Europe, and Japan were displaying graffiti in major galleries. New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority responded with dogs, barbed-wire fences, paint-removing acid baths, and undercoverpolicesquads.