Deface Value

The following is a paper I wrote for a class with the topic "Rap is to music as graffiti is to art"

Rap is to music as graffiti is to art; that is the topic I have chosen to write about. I find that this statement is very true, because I have always noticed striking similarities between the two only slightly different subjects. It is not that they’re both related to a form of art, but that they are both a form of art in themselves. They’re not only both a style of defacement, but also a style of pure self expression. Any way you slice it, aside from being different mediums, graffiti and rap have something going on.
Let us look at art in general; what is art? One definition of this is ‘the product of human creativity,’ or ‘a superior skill that you can learn by study and observation.’ My personal definition of art is simple, ‘any form of emotional self expression.’ Whether you paint a fresco, sculpt a skull out of cigarettes, or just throw water balloons full of poster paint at a canvas, you have at least attempted to make a form of art. Unfortunately, those book definitions would lead you to believe that art is an elitist, almost complicated ‘skill.’
Try to think back far, way into the past to before kindergarten. There were not real shapes, no real colors, no theory of depth and spatial recognition; for me there was only a long sheet of paper and a box of 96 different Crayola colors. This would often translate into, on the surface, little more than scribbles and scrawling. It was crude, it was sloppy, but it was how I truly expressed myself without throwing a tantrum, or food into a wall. These scribbles and scrawls were my art; they were my defacement of a piece of perfectly good paper
Graffiti, specifically modern graffiti, on the surface looks like nothing more than obscure lines, curves, and spots; a laugh and a spit in the face at even the mere attempt to do proper calligraphy. And yet, within graffiti we see words, we can derive moods from the choice of colors; we can find symbolism in the shaping of not just the words, but each individual letter. Graffiti is, albeit almost childlike, a near absolutely pure form of self expression. Even though it often used in defacement of a perfectly good wall, it’s no less art than the scribbles and scrawls of a toddler not even in kindergarten.
Music is also a form of art, and ‘experts’ will also tell you that this is complicated. They will show you music theory, sheet writing, notes, half notes, quarter notes, pauses, sharps, flats and a whole mess of unnecessary jargon all to tell you what good music is. Good music, like good art, cannot be taught or told, it can only be found or heard. You could say that any fool will tell you that a symphony sounds better than a man breaking glass with his face; but I believe it is any fool that will try to give reason why one is superlative to the other.
Another form of art, of self expression, is slam poetry. Often explosive, often emotional, often dropping the idea of ‘rhyme or reason,’ abandoning the rhyme for more reason. To perform slam poetry in a coffee house is to be an artist, to be a ‘genius.’ However, if we attempt to translate this poetry into music, setting it to a beat and calling it ‘rap,’ people will shoot it down as noise, a defacement of the music industry. Sounds an awful lot like something else dismissed as defacement, as some lower form of expression… Like graffiti, when in truth graffiti and rap can be more pure, more emotional, and more expressive than what the general populous consider ‘art’ and ‘music.’ Indeed, graffiti is to art as rap is to music.