The history of Black street gangs and their relationship with Black communities, particularly in the West, is a terrain as intricate as it is misunderstood. This history is layered with trauma, survival, resistance, and expression, a web that cannot be unraveled without confronting the systemic racism, economic disenfranchisement, and state violence that birthed these organisations. What is often flattened into narratives of violence and criminality deserves a more nuanced and human view. Though I do not claim authority or lived experience to tell the full story, I aim here to sketch an idea, one that links Black gang culture to art, and the art world's uncomfortable tendency to erase that origin.
Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips, offered in his book Blue Rage, Black Redemption a firsthand account of gang life, not in glamour, but in grit, confusion, and community. His perspective, forged through his lived experience, unveils what the mainstream rarely admits: that Black gangs like the Crips and Bloods originally emerged as self-governance structures in neighbourhoods long abandoned by the state. They were answers, however imperfect, to conditions of systemic neglect. Born from cycles of poverty, these gangs cultivated a sense of brotherhood, protection, and identity. In this environment, culture was not just preserved, it was invented.
It is impossible to separate graffiti from hip-hop, and equally hard to separate hip-hop from Black gang culture. While not all hip-hop artists are gang-affiliated, to deny the influence of Black gangs on hip-hop's early structure, its language, dress, postures, and themes, would be dishonest. Since graffiti was one of the original elements of hip-hop, the aesthetic lines between gangs, music, and visual arts become blurred by default. This symbiosis birthed a new cultural language, one born in pain, resistance, and survival. In today's global art landscape, echoes of this language remain, but its roots are rarely acknowledged. In the UK, for instance, Banksy has become a household name, known for his minimalist, politically provocative stencil work. His art, now selling for millions, emerged from an underground scene shaped by gang-tagging culture and urban graffiti battles. And yet, the cultural debt owed to Black and marginalised street artists, many of whom were directly tied to gang life, is largely unpaid.
The graffiti alphabet, the ritual of tagging, the territorial nature of certain works, these are inheritances from these cultures. But the art world, despite its supposed liberalism, often engages in selective inclusion. Black gang-adjacent contributions are either sterilised or ignored. Theaster Gates, a contemporary artist whose work is grounded in urban renewal and Black life, makes visible the systems that try to erase these legacies. His practice reflects the same impulse seen in early gang formations: to build structure, purpose, and identity in spaces left to rot. To be clear, this is not an ode to gangs. Gang violence is real and devastating. But rejecting the harm does not mean erasing the culture. Black gang life, like any cultural system, contains multitudes. Alongside the violence exists innovation, survival, and a deep longing for expression. That artistic expression, born in overlooked and over-policed communities, is what gave birth to some of the most important visual languages of the past 50 years.
This article is not about the broad intersectionality of gangs with class, gender, and other social structures. It is about art, and more specifically, about how Black gang culture, particularly in the U.S., has profoundly shaped the world of contemporary and street art, even as it is denied credit.
Gang culture has always communicated through visual language, symbols, tags, colours, and coded patterns that signal identity, allegiance, territory, and defiance. What mainstream critics once called "vandalism" was in truth a system of meaning, a grassroots semiotics born in the streets. From the scrawled tags on South Central walls to elaborate murals on housing projects, this language would go on to influence global movements. In New York City, where graffiti bloomed across subway trains in the '70s and '80s, the influence of Black and Latino gangs was direct and foundational. These early street artists, many of them gang-affiliated laid the groundwork for the graffiti movement, one that Jean-Michel Basquiat would later elevate into galleries and museums. Basquiat's early partnership with Al Diaz in SAMO ("Same Old Shit") was rooted in the streets and the rhythm of rebellion. His later neo-expressionist canvases borrowed heavily from the coded aesthetics of gang culture: cryptic symbols, raw colours, and an anti-establishment impulse. His genius was not in inventing from nothing, but in translating what the streets were already saying.
To engage honestly with contemporary art is to trace its lineage. And if we are tracing honestly, Black gangs, their symbols, codes, and aesthetics must be named as foundational contributors. The discomfort in doing so lies not in their cultural value, but in society's reluctance to view gang members as fully human, let alone as cultural architects.
Real progress in art means confronting these uncomfortable truths.
It means expanding the conversation to include those who weren't invited to the gallery openings but painted the walls the gallery now mimics.
It means giving credit where it's due not because it's politically correct, but because it's historically accurate.
- Taizya Adedeji
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