Graffiti

•  Written and illustrated by industry insiders

• Definitive book on capturing hip-hop style in art

Hip-hop is more than baggy jeans and explicit song lyrics. It's a cultural force that influences everything we see and everything we hear.

This unique drawing tutorial gives artists and in-depth look at the styles that make the Japanese urban and hip hop trend the dominant culture it is today. It takes artists through some of the distinctive urban environments, city living conditions, and youth entertainment that are essential elements in drawing urban-hip hop manga.

Brash, bold and breakin' all the rules, Beat Street is a powerful and "gritty streetwise musical" (LA Herald-Examiner).

Some call it tagging, some call it writing, still others call it bombing--it's all graffiti. Whether it's art or not is another matter, but it's undeniably illegal. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's historic PBS documentary Style Wars tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Wild Style captured the hard core South Bronx scene with its pantheon of hip-hop pioneers: Grand Master Flash, The Cold Crush Bros, The Chief Rocker Busy Bee, and The Rock Steady Crew. Wild Style tells the story of Zoro (graffiti legend Lee Quinones), in his subway art romance with Ladybug (another graffiti legend Sandra Pink Fabara). Fab Five Freddy stars as the smooth impresario Phade.

Art featured by Edgar Arceneaux, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Davide Bertocchi, Sanford Biggers (with David Ellis), Max King Cap, Juan Capistran, Mel Chin, Brett Cook-Dizney, Englightenment, Luis Gispert, Howard Goldkrand, Renee Green, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Glenn Kaino, Nikki S.

The graffiti phenomenon taking place in urban America has erupted into a full scale war. The main weapons: aerosol spray paint versus hundreds of taxpayer-funded abatements programs. To the graffiti writer, graffiti is a secret language, an empowering form of self-expression, a screaming voice against an unjust, alienating society.