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Toy tag artists: "Writin my rhymes, in graffiti on the wall"

© Steve Juon

If you'll forgive me for a minute, I'm going to use this week's column to bitch about toy tag artists. If you don't know what a toy tag artist is, let me explain: a graffiti artist is a person who paints vivid murals of ghetto fantasy and reality with bold styles and colors. A toy tag artist is some punk who scribbles his name on a wall and brags about to his homeboys.

Now it seems that in my hometown lately we've had an explosion of toy taggers. These people write their names on the side of a garbage can or the underpass of a bridge and suddenly think they're the shit. I guarantee you; if a real graf artist heard that shit in New York their cans would get snatched and they'd get their ass beat. Unfortunately, since this is Ames, IA these little punks get away with it. Worse still, graffiti artists already have a hard rap to beat and THESE toy taggers make it worse by making garbage instead of representing true art.

People often forget that graffiti is one of the four vital elements of hip-hop (the others are b-boy, MC, and DJ). When you represent graffiti you're representing hip-hop for better or worse. Now if you're gonna tag in my city, you're gonna do it with respect to the culture -- and if I catch you making a punk tag with nothing more than your name in a white outline with no colors or styles I know a few kids who aren't gonna play that. And I encourage you -- step to the toy taggers. Respect the real graffiti art, but not the toy taggers who give us all a bad name. If you're a city commisioner or a police office and you read this, understand: we aren't trying to ruin your fair city with our art. Graffiti is supposed to beautify ugly brick walls and boring building sides. Good art should not be painted over -- wall scrawlers and toy taggers I could care less about though. If you don't like graffiti ask some artists to paint you a beautiful hip-hop mural and then watch THEM defend your building for you from all the little toys who would come fuck up your building and their artwork.

Peace, Flash

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