In the United States, graffiti is primarily associated with the explosion of urban gangs in the late 1960′s and 1970′s in South Bronx, Washington Heights and other impoverished neighborhoods of New York City. Starting with the major urbanization of many areas in the post-war period of the 20th century, urban gangs of young teenagers produced graffiti murals and covered the city with self-invented stylized signatures of names, known as tags, to mark their territory. Although this was not a new practice to the city, graffiti gained extensive consideration viewed as a way to challenge the system and express social manifestation.

Near the end of the 20th century, non-gang related graffiti was practiced for the sake of personal promotion and increased reputation. In some cases, artists performed extremely elaborate murals only to pay their respects to a deceased person. Such graffiti occurred after the deaths of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. In this context, for the first time, hip hop graffiti and gang graffiti were differentiated, at least in the minds of those who could spot the differences.

Hip hop graffiti is a means of self-expression and creativity rather than a way of gang demonstration. In the mid-1970s new music and dance forms emerged in Bronx and Brooklyn as a result of experimentation of black youth with new sounds, and neighborhood block parties. With the emergence of DJ’ing and breakdancing, graffiti pieces involved highly stylish letter-forms drawn with markers, or puzzling, multi-colorful spray paint murals on walls, buildings, and subways.

Together these music, language, graffiti and clothing embraced a new cultural fact, a new massive reality, ultimately a rich mix of creative practices that became known as hip hop. Eventually, many of these self-educated graffiti artists became well-known graphic designers working for Snoop Dogg, Run-DMC, Buddy Esquire, Spike Lee, Dapper Dan, designing album covers, sportswear, stage backdrops and great logos.

Hip hop graffiti is not vandalism as many people wrongly believe. Another element that differentiates graffiti artists from gang graffiti is that hip hop graffiti is constantly improved with new additions in its techniques. In contrast, the function of gang graffiti is mostly related to marking territorial boundaries and, therefore does not require, neither presupposes artistic intent. Those who differentiate between tagging and graffiti generally view tagging as gang-directed or vandalism-oriented with vulgar meaning and extremely controversial to encompass public value.

There is no expert technical “trickery” involved in becoming a great hip hop beat producer. All you need is talent, and the determination to work hard, and a deep underlying passion for the music. If you have all these three qualities, there is really nothing that can stop you from joining the ranks of Kanye or Dr. Dre as a great hip hop producer.

When you start off on your beat making journey, you might get a little overwhelmed with all the options that you have at your disposal. You can literally do anything with your beats, imparting any flavor or twist you might want to (that’s why it’s a creative and highly rewarding field). Of course, that’s not the way to really go about becoming great at beat making; a far better route would be to pick one style – say East Coast beats – and sticking with it until you learn all the tricks of the trade.

One obvious consideration for any aspiring beat maker is equipment. Too many wanna-be beat producers never let their dream materialize because of some deep belief that you need the best equipment and the most expensive software with the craziest set up to make great beats. This is, of course, untrue. You can start off with a little less than a hundred dollars and make beats that sound more than professional, provided you know what equipment to purchase.

The cheapest, and the easiest option is to purchase a beat making software. This software have been designed specifically to help you make beats and come with a huge library of pre-created beats and loops that you can tweak and modify to impart them your own flavor. Being in 2009 has its advantages; all those veteran beat makers you see on TV didn’t have access to technology like this, otherwise their journey would’ve been a lot smoother.