Sticker Bombing: Art Or Artifact? How Slaps Evolved To A Global Hustle Rooted In Writing Culture – | MRC Hip Hop

Above Photo credit: LaMont Reed, Wynwood Miami, 2019 featuring layered tags and slaps.

You ever be walking through the city and spot a light pole stacked like a mixtape with layers of tags, characters, cryptic logos, and crew shouts all slapped in the same SPOT? That’s sticker bombing.

Is it part of writing culture? Before the Digital Era, the OGs of adhesive slaps… before sticker packs were sold online or printed with crisp Illustrator files… heads were making up hand drawn pieces on blank postal labels, “Hello My Name Is” tags, and ANYTHING with a sticky back.

PHASE 2, a true godfather of style, was one of the first to experiment with expanding letterform expression into new media, from flyers, zines and tags ect ect..

Street artists and writers like Cost and Revs (NYC, early ‘90s) took it to another level bombing five boroughs not just with throwies and rollers, but cryptic wheatpastes and stickers. Their stickers were raw and effective in early street marketing before the term even existed.

COST/REVS STICKER

By the late ‘90s, Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant stickers started popping up. While not a writer, his campaign borrowed the repetition, and space jacking tactics of tagging and bombing.

Writers like Twist (Barry McGee) in SF were hand-drawing stickers that showed off his wild characters and signature lettering, crossing the lines between gallery art, street art, and stylewriting.

Barry Mcgee / TWIST Art

What is Stylewriting, just writing on walls? It’s kinda like a coded language, a dialect rooted in supposed to be letterform mastery, taking risk, territory, crew identity, unspoken rules of respect, reputation, and skills. Writers talk with tags, burners, throw-ups, handstyles, and fill-ins. The paint’s permanent, so some might view stickers as light work.

The MRC Crew thinks slaps are dope, fast and dirty. In cities like Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo where laws are heavy, slaps are like quick tags with less heat from the authorities.

Japan Photo credit: @stylewriting_n_such Instagram

Japan Photo credit: @stylewriting_n_such Instagram

Some say crews like 14B, THC, and IFK made sticker trades an underground postal network in the late ‘90s, spreading tags and going viral before all the Instagram hype. If you’re reading this and you have info on this subject matter and would like to enlighten us, you can always shoot us a message.

Sticker bombing can showcase your style in its rawest form, no fill, no frills. Is there a debate? Maybe, like some writers might side-eye sticker bombers, claiming to be real heads but are just street artist culture vulture clout chasers.

With mass-printed vinyl’s and no-risk slapping, some might see it as gentrified tagging.

St. Petersburg, Florida Photo credit: LaMont R.

Wynwood Miami 2019 Photo credit: LaMont R.

DASER Toronto Photo credit: @stylewriting_n_such Instagram

Anyone can print a design, slap it on a mailbox, street sign ect., and call it “Getting Up.” But if we talk about original writing, getting your name up by any means necessary, slaps do check the box.

Plenty of certified writers still use stickers as part of their arsenal.

MKUE, GATS, KATSU, and CEKIS

Sticker bombing is now a big hustle especially if you’re an artist, musician, or entrepreneur on a budget. It’s a form of name repetition, presence, and communication. Like mixtapes to albums, freestyles to written bars, stickers can be both practice and product. Street heat that speaks volumes.

Are you a collector looking for some original writer slaps? Check for some real legacy in our MRC Hip Hop Shop. Or send us a message about acquiring some OG handstyle postal slaps from COOL SKI 168 . Visit the MRCNN Store and support the pioneers.