Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Hip Hop has taken more than a few losses and the graffiti world has not been exempt as one of its giants from the first generation of graffiti, TRACY 168, reportedly past away last month at his home in the Bronx. He was 65 years old.
Born Michael Tracy, He wrote his first tag on an NYC MTA bus in 1969 and never stopped. His graffiti art is recognized as the original “Wild Style” and was a mentor to famous late NYC graff artist turned contemporary art icon Keith Haring. TRACY wrote with some of graff’s most revered writers such as CLIFF, LSD, P NUT SKEME and others. He was an honorary member of legendary South Bronx gang The Black Spades and later formed his own crew known as The Wanted.
TRACY 168 will be sorely missed by the graff community, but his work and art will live on forever.
Wild Style is arguably the very first movie and one of the very few that shows the true essence of what Hip Hop is about. When Hip-Hop was being passed off as a fad that wouldn’t last beyond “Rapper’s Delight,” a vivid reenactment of the introduction of this artistic culture to the world was made. In 1983, film director and cultural artist Charlie Ahearn premiered the flick in Times Square, breaking records by selling out at all screenings for the three weeks it played.
A member of the collective artist group Collaborative Projects, Ahearn was initially exposed to Hip Hop in the late 70s through graffiti when he went to film the youth in the projects in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that studied martial arts. He was soon approached by Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Braithwaite about making a movie encompassing all elements of Hip-Hop (emceeing, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti). Fab 5 Freddy brought legendary graff artist Lee Quinones to meet Ahearn to discuss further the approach of filming graffiti and introducing it as a legitimate art form. Ahearn found out that Lee was the same graf king whose work he admired while filming in LES. With Ahearn as producer and director, the three began embarking on a journey to gather the individuals who would be the faces of this landmark film.
Developing its name from an abstract letter design made famous in the graffiti world by graff king Tracy 168, Wild Style featured some of the most prolific pioneers from all aspects of Hip-Hop. The Cold Crush Brothers, Rock Steady Crew, and Grandmaster Flash were just a few of Hip-Hop’s trailblazers that debuted on Wild Style’s silver screen. The Furious Five could not appear alongside Flash and had to be cut from the film because of prior obligations to another more mainstream motion picture depicting the development of Hip Hop that came out later called Beat Street. This is why Afrika Bambaataa, the New York City Breakers, The Treacherous Three, or female pioneer MC Sha Rock were not seen in the film. Other notable legends included Busy Bee Starski, graf legends Dondi, Zephyr, and Revolt, who designed the Wild Style logo, and the Fantastic Freaks.
Lee Quinones played the main character “Zoro,” the anonymous graf phenom introduced to the art world by his pal and fellow graffiti writer “Faze,” played by Fab 5 Freddy. Faze introduces Zoro to Virginia, a journalist portrayed by cultural icon Patti Astor, who later shows Zoro to art’s world stage of galleries and museums. The story is an accurate historical account of how Hip-Hop, in general, was introduced to mainstream America and, later, the rest of the world. It also showed the poverty and despair that existed in the South Bronx, out of which the culture of Hip Hop emerged.
Over 30 years later, Wild Style is still an American pop culture icon. The players that participated and performed in the movie have made themselves legends in their own right. However, most will recognize their appearance in the film as the catapult of their career. The movie has been sampled on various classic Hip Hop albums, including ATCQ’s Midnight Marauders, Common’s Ressurection, and the Five Mic classic, Nas’ Illmatic. Wild Style was voted one of the top ten rock n’ roll movies of all time by the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame, and VH1’s Hip Hop Honors acknowledged the film’s influence in Hip Hop with a tribute in 2007.
Curtis Fisher a.k.a Grandmaster Caz, one of Hip Hop’s very first and most well known ghostwriters, turns 59 today. He currently works as a celebrity tour guide for Hush Hip Hop Tours, a Hip Hop cultural sightseeing tour company in NYC and is a board member of The Universal Federation for the Preservation of Hip Hop Culture.
In his apex in the early 80s, Caz was a founding member of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers and also singlehandedly wrote Hip Hop’s most recognizable hit of all time, “Rapper’s Delight, which was performed by The Sugar Hill Gang. Unfortunately, Caz was never compensated at all for that piece of Hip Hop history.
Caz has done his part to preserve the Hip Hop culture in his own right, and in 1998 he was listed #11 out of Blaze Magazine‘s Top 50 MCs of All Time. Caz was also inducted into the Technics DJ Hall of Fame in 1999 and June 2008, Grandmaster Caz was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame. We at TheSource.com want to wish a very happy 59th to the true Grandmaster.
Curtis Fisher a.k.a Grandmaster Caz, one of Hip Hop’s very first and most well known ghostwriters, turns 59 today. He currently works as a celebrity tour guide for Hush Hip Hop Tours, a Hip Hop cultural sightseeing tour company in NYC and is a board member of The Universal Federation for the Preservation of Hip Hop Culture.
In his apex in the early 80s, Caz was a founding member of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers and also singlehandedly wrote Hip Hop’s most recognizable hit of all time, “Rapper’s Delight, which was performed by The Sugar Hill Gang. Unfortunately, Caz was never compensated at all for that piece of Hip Hop history.
Caz has done his part to preserve the Hip Hop culture in his own right, and in 1998 he was listed #11 out of Blaze Magazine‘s Top 50 MCs of All Time. Caz was also inducted into the Technics DJ Hall of Fame in 1999 and June 2008, Grandmaster Caz was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame. We at TheSource.com want to wish a very happy 59th to the true Grandmaster.
The entire graffiti world is mourning the loss of one of its great pioneers who lost his life this morning to complications from the novel coronavirus.
NIC 707 OTB, one of the original writers to bomb the NYC subways in the early 70s, passed away today(April 13) after contracting the Covid-19 virus.
Born Fernando Pabllo Miteff Jr. in Argentina to a famous Argentinian boxer of that era with the same name. He moved to the Bronx as a child, where his love for art quickly immersed him into the world of writing graffiti. He originally wrote the tag STINE 169, but in 1974, ultimately changed his name to NIC 707. He also founded the legendary OTB(Out To Bomb) Crew in the late 70s, which now holds thousands across the world under the OTB banner.
NIC 707 is one of NYC’s “Style Masters”, making himself a regular sight on the IRT and IND lines in the 70s and early 80s. His unprecedented link between the first and second generation of writers can only be rivaled by the likes of the late KASE 2 and CHAIN 3.
There has been an outpour of sadness from all over the world over the loss of such a large figure in the graff community. JAMES TOP the Executive Director of the NYC Graffiti Events Center and legendary artist in his own right, spoke more about NIC’s personality than his art. “He was one of the most popular graffiti artist today. He would show up at all my events a hour before they would start to help me out if I needed anything. That’s what type of person he was,” said JAMES TOP.
