Can't Stop, Won't Stop Chapter 6

Furious Styles: The Evolution of Style in the Seven-Mile World
by: Rachel Scholtz, Kathleen Secor, Kimberly Conley

The seven-mile world had its center in Crotonoa Park (Bronx, NY) and extended to create a seven mile radius around this park. Crazy Legs described hip-hop’s four elements as: DJing, MCing, B-boying, and graffiti. Joseph Saddler, later named Grandmaster Flash, became known as a DJ because of his style. He focused on showmanship, such as scratching with his elbows and flipping around. He later added MCs to pump up the crowd because no one would listen to just the music without words. Soon he became more liked than Kool Herc and Bambaataa. B-boying was originally created by kids too young to get into clubs, but then spread out of homes into the streets. It soon became part of gang life and was a mixture of martial arts and dance made to intimidate other gangs. Gangs would compete for dominance in an area with movements that mimicked fighting and stabbing. Graffiti was seen as a “way of gaining status in a society where to own property is to have identity”. Fame was the goal because it equaled wealth, therefore the more risky a target, the more fame someone got for tagging it. This was one of the first movements to break out of the seven-mile world by moving along train lines. Because it spread so quickly it was mostly desegregated. It became so prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s that new graffiti had to be done over someone else’s graffiti. Quantity became more important than quality. The reasoning behind graffiti was to defy a hostile world and create a name for yourself.