Writings of a Writer – Part 1

the always excellent QN5 blog got an update:

Long before I ever said my name in a rap, I was putting my name on walls. Even tho MCing is my calling, graffiti is my first passion in hiphop. I started writing my name on my desk when I was in junior high school so that whoever had the desk after me would see my name. Then people started getting nicknames. Mine was RAT. I got that name because dudes in my crew had a fight with some other cats and I snuck in and punched this dude like a little rat haha. So when I got home, I took a marker and wrote it on the door of some building on my block. Fast forward 2 years to high school, I had been practicing cool ways to write my name which changed about 3 times since. Now I was tagging up Gizmo (I have no clue why) and I started a crew called UTFO (Untouchable Fly Ones). I wrote it all over my locker and got in trouble for vandalizing school property. All my boys from around the way were getting into graf more serious and I started seeing that they were using spray paint to put their names up and to me that made them OFFICIAL. They would tell me about how they went out mad late and caught tags all over. My mother was strict as hell so they knew to not even bother askin if I could roll. They formed a crew called NUF (Niggas Using Force) and they said if I wanted to be down, I had to get a real tag, because by this time I took on the name False.

You can read the rest here.