While searching my video shop for Hip Hop movies I came across this film. Having not heard of it before and the fact that it was a 70 minute documentary made me a bit skeptic about hiring it, but after reading a quote by Krs-One on the front cover saying it was what I had to see for true Hip Hop I was eager to get it out. It turned out to be a great documentary on graffiti and Hip Hop in the early eighties which I throughly enjoyed.

It was interesting to see how mixed the scene was race wise back then. This could be quite funny at times, like seeing a hardcore subway graffiti artist with a tight Van Halen t-shirt on and long red hair. This showed that graffiti, DJing, breaking and MCing weren't all considered Hip Hop back then. To do one didn't mean you were into the other.

Style Wars makes you understand the pride and enjoyment the artists get out of bombing trains, but you also realize how awful it is for the government to replace or clean trains and especially how bad it is for one bomber's mother.

Style Wars is primarily a documentary on graffiti but it also briefly touches on breaking and MCing. Funny that it doesn't mention DJing as a main part of Hip Hop, since that is considered the original and sometimes most important element these days.

Overall, Style Wars is a fantastic documentary and a must see for fans of Graffiti and early Hip Hop.

this movie rocks yo its all freaky seein some of these the dopest of the dope the baddest most freakalistic writers to ever put paint to taint the machine and take a piece of it and say "I AM HERE I AM LEAVING MY MARK ON THIS WORLD" and daaaaamn they do it so nice yo man this is must know must see for anyone who thinks they kick it old school yo this is the way it was not the way you thought it was go get a kurtis blow record yo now kick it and lemme turn this up ya know what i'm sayin

"Style Wars" came out after "Wild Style," a drama about this emerging culture in New York called hip-hop. But it preceded "Beat Street," (1984) which was a drama that had all of the elements of the documentary "Style Wars." In fact, I'd say that "Beat Street" was patterned directly after "Style Wars." Dare I say that "Beat Street" was a biter. They bit off of "Style Wars."

"Style Wars" focuses mostly on the graffiti element while giving some run to b-boying (dancing), MC'ing (rapping) and DJ'ing. For me the whole thing is surreal. I watched the movie "Beat Street" hundreds of times and thought it was just a really good movie, I never suspected that it was depicting real people in New York in the early 80's.

If you want a complete early 80's hip-hop cinema collection, see "Wild Style," "Style Wars," "Beat Street," "Breakin'," and "Krush Groove."