ALL HAIL THE KINGZ

If you were from LA, a kid, and ran the streetz, you had a tag name.  You owned a pilot marker. You owned a mean streak.  You blended mean streaks with your homie to make different colors.  You knew what "rackin'" was.  You used words like heaven, buffed, going over in your daily conversations.  You described colors as icy grape, true blue and flat black.   Bombing didn't mean bin ladin. And FAT CAPS were boss.  How was a private schooled kid like me, get mixed up in some illegal street shit...which would have a lasting impression to this day.  I thought it was a phase.  juvenile.  I would scribble my tag on books and lecture notes dating back in elementary to incorporating my same tag in graduate school on my same books and lecture notes.  Little did I know, tagging would be a spark for more creative things to evolve into growing up.


Go back to the late 80's-early 90's.  Back then, one tagger was everywhere.  You seen his name on everything and anything. No stencil sticker BS they call graffiti now, just a straight flat black, fat cap name sprayed on the wall...CHAKA.  For LAPD, he was Public Enemy #1.  Fast forward to 2009.