MimiStyles Glam Blog 

Hip Hop Culture lives on. I took this picture in California at Venice Beach. I love going there to see what kind of Entertainment will be representing on the Strip. As I was watching a group of young guys who were break dancing and pop locking for donations.
I remembered when the first Rap Album came out, I was there to witness the birth of Hip Hop and the movement it came with .It was the most amazing time to be young, because we all got this feeling that something profound was arising. Something that would change the hard knock kids life and open the windows of opportunity.
 I was a kid in Detroit hangin out at the Community Center a couple of blocks down from my house, thats where all us kids back in the day use to hang out to get away from our crazy parents, show everyone the new dances, like Pop locking and the moonwalk.
 The style trend was straight leg jeans folded up at the bottom to show your socks and colored suspenders on, a button down dress shirt, maybe a tie and a big apple hat you would wear to the side. The dudes that dressed like that would show their dance routines and spit a couple of lines of a rap they made up, while someone would be holding a Huge Boom Box in their shoulder. We use to stand there like Whooaaaaahhhh, what is this talk. We were fascinated .It was a time when the DJ was theeeee MMMAAAAN! We expected him to bring us what's real on the Streets and he did by touring community centers like ours, basket ball court events and block parties.
Hip Hop was so underground, they didn't even play it in the day time, every one I knew would stay up late at night to put their tapes in the boom box cuz MoJo (a very famous Detroit DJ back in the late 70's early 80's) would come on with the baddest introduction you ever heard, He introduced mixin and scratchin to the airwaves along with all the first New York underground break beats mostly instrumental (which birthed the Break dance Movement).
Hip Hop wasn't all the way excepted at first, people thought it wasn't talent or skill. There was an enormous racial barrier and economic divide in America with the "Haves and the Have Mores" , then there was the rest of us. If you weren't accepted to college with a full scholarship your opportunities of advancement was very minimal. The Music and the Movement was SERIOUS!

No one where I came from really expressed movin up too much in the world, it was like their was a glass bubble that we were on the inside of and the beautiful life we saw on tv or with white people was outside of that bubble. But when Hip Hop hit the scene ,that barrier shattered! Color lines were crossed immediately with Generation X, my Generation.
It was like a tidal wave of hardcore males and females rappin, Here I AM , Here I go, Look how Fly I dressed, You will recognize Me and my Crew! Man, all of a sudden hip hop was all over the news because kids were formin rap and dance crews, they were sportin ripped holes in their jeans and t-shirt, shaving lines and rockin crazy colors in their heads (yeah, me too) we were expressing our creative side with colored bandanas rapped around our legs and our shoe laces rapped around at the bottom of our pants so when we danced every thing was in place, I mean bell bottoms were still out at that time, so the Hip Hop movement changed all that, we influenced every trend and white folks was scauuuurrredd.
They didn't know what the hell was going on. We wore all kinds of crazy colors together, yeah we were saying, Look at Me! From the average talk show to prime time news we heard them talkin about groups of gangs who would confront and stare at each other, then a Battle would break out. They would be saying on television, "please don't be alarmed, these are positive kids who are expressing them selves in a creative genre of dance and speaking? lol, and names like Rock Steady Crew,The Original Breakers, Tictoc, Booggaloo and whole bunch of others who I can't remember any more would be giving interviews and allowing the cameras to take a look inside the world of Hip Hop! 
You'd see their names spray painted on buildings and that was the birth of Graffiti . It was beautiful Art and Style back then, wasn't like this B.S. wit gangs just taggin hoods, dumb asses don't own a pot to piss in or a window to through it out. No title, no deed to any house on the block , just messin isssh up in their neighborhoods and destroying the quality of living there, big dummies, I bet there bedrooms and their underwear is just as trifflin! Yeah, I said it! The only tags that you saw were on ugly abandoned buildings or corrupted buses, because the city at the time wasn't investing money in lower class neighborhoods or trying to tear down vacant buildings, it was really bad in some hoods.
 The exterior look of subways and buses, they use to look so raggedy and depressing to get on. I think they only started cleaning up the buses making them more suitable to ride on after the famous taggers back in the day took over. It was visually outstanding to see hood story lines spray painted in all kinds of interesting time line scenes on buildings and city transportation. It was just really cool bright Artistic Expression and a lot of Graffiti Artist/ Taggers got the attention of Hollywood and New York talent scouts every where. Of course, they took those opportunities to the next level in their life, cuz that's what Hip Hop is. .. Hell, I had some skills with that too! (just nobody recognized that at the time, daammnn!)
I think back how, many of us teens packed the skating rinks, we didn't skate, we packed the middle of the rink with our phat laced pumas, all stars, converse and My Adidas..in the late 80's. About a thousand teens would crazy nick names air brushed down their jeans and some kind of unique symbol with their crew on their sweat shirts on them mass populated the place.
We couldn't find our kind of clothing choices in the Malls, so we made them our selves. We would slice small slits across them with a razor blade then throw them in the wash with a cap full of bleach and their was our acid wash jeans. We did the same with our t-shirts and sweat shirts, I would then rip my sweat shirt all up and put about 100 colored safety pins in it to hold it back together in various places and put a tank top or wife beater (is what we call it) underneath. It was always a dude on the block or up the street who would spray paint a picture of ourselves or something fresh he would make up for a small donation.
The crew I was in.... We were "The Skeme Team" !lol.. My famous rap was -- Now the rhymes I create would spark or start a Friction..... Rhymes so Divine.... Guaranteed to form a Mission.OOOOOOHHHHhh...Booyeee! lol. Okay, I'm going to be embarrassed in a minute so I will stop... Oh wait.. Bustin and crushin the serious grooves... rymin and dividin with the serious moves.. alright.. My five seconds of Hip Hop fame is dead!
But we'd all be there watchin the routines of dance crews that practiced every day, including us, we were rappers and hip hop dancers. We danced so much, every chance we got after school and on weekends, that to this day, I can see a rap video and do all the dances the first time I watch the video.. Yeah, it's like that, Hip Hop for Life... Baby!
So we use to Battle Hard, couldn't nobody fade us!!!!! We would walk in the front door in a single line and be doing some tight move, lookin all serious and then when we got the attention of everyone we would stop and cross our hands above our chest and say "You Know Wut the Flava Is!" The Music was our truth back then, Hip Hop was Real Life.. the Struggle.. The Pain.. the Frustrations.. The Motivation.. The Drive.. The Hustle... The Power to make it happen. Hell Yeah!! Real Hip Hop for Life..
So when I see teens on the street continuing the movement with a Freshness and Style that seems like it just started, I so am Happy! I am proud and I am Honored to still be apart of this Hip Hop Culture....its the only culture that we are forever young and our hustle is still strong....we are still inspired to keep it movin! Strivin and Thrivin. We don't die we multiply! I Am Real Hip Hop for Life!!! Peeaacce!