Taki 183

Graffiti was the first of the four Hip Hop elements to take form, with Greek American teenager Taki 183, a messenger from the Washington Heights area of Manhattan, credited as the first person to "get up," scrawling his tag on walls, subway stations and inside trains all over the city in the summer of 1970. After an article about Taki 183 ran in The New York Times, other teens followed his lead, selecting aliases and scribbling their names in public through the city, with subway trains emerging as the ultimate canvases due to their sheer visibility. Barbara 62, Eva 62, Stay High 149, and Phase 2 figure among the earliest writers to truly "get up." Over time, these budding artists began experimenting with different styles of lettering and color options, moving beyond black-marker tags to spray painted 3D and bubble letter pieces with elaborate backgrounds and provocative caricatures.