Hip-hop legend KRS-One headlined a panel of artists discussing the status of graffiti art and hip-hop in Phoenix at ASU’s Evelyn Smith Music Theatre on the Tempe campus Saturday afternoon.

The Hip-Hop in Phoenix Roundtable was part of Civil Disobedience, an urban conversation combining graffiti art and education sponsored by ASU’s Herberger College of the Arts.

The event started Friday with the celebration of the transformation of a Phoenix alley once littered with trash and hypodermic needles into a vibrant corridor of urban art, said Richard Mook, assistant professor of music and organizer of Civil Disobedience.

It culminated Saturday with the filming of KRS-One’s new video, shot on location at Graffiti Alley, near 18th Street and McDowell Road.

Panelists on Saturday covered topics ranging from hip-hop in the classroom to the graffiti art community in Phoenix.

KRS-One likened graffiti art to Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of creative dissatisfaction — creatively expressing one’s dissatisfaction rather than robbing, stealing or killing. He differentiated graffiti art from tagging.

“Tagging is vandalism,” he said.

Although graffiti art is an ancient practice, KRS-One said that for him, it began in the 1980s in New York City when he used to steal paint and go to the train yards in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was a means of existence in a world that stifled his voice. If you can’t express yourself in society, you’re oppressed, he said.

“You’re not seeing me, you’re not hearing me and, actually, you’re trying to avoid me,” KRS-One said. “I’m going to make my voice heard.”

Local graffiti artist Michael Amaya said he is from Compton, Calif., where kids who grow up in the streets usually stayed in the streets. Graffiti gave him an out.

“I chose art, not gangs,” Amaya said.

He is trying to change the misconception that graffiti isn’t art by revitalizing central Phoenix through spray paint. Amaya went to neighborhood businesses that make up Graffiti Alley and got permission to paint their back walls. Other local artists and kids from the community got involved with the project. Now people are taking more pride in their neighborhood, he said.

“The city wasn’t even taking care of it,” Amaya said. “Now people say, ‘You’re pimping out my alley.’”

Graffiti art is only one aspect of hip-hop, which includes MCing, breakdancing and rapping.

“Hip-hop is an idea, not a physical thing,” KRS-One said.

Although it has infused itself into all music genres, weaved its way into the fabric of American society and found a place in corporate America, KRS-One said hip-hop is continuing to evolve and build its identity.

For hip-hop to find a stronger foothold in Arizona, KRS-One said Tempe and Phoenix should battle, alluding to the competition between the East Coast and West Coast hip-hop scene. The cities should battle through their art, he said.

“Competition is the seed of the market. Without it, art becomes stale,” KRS-One said. “Art cannot live without conflict.”

Reach the reporter at philip.haldiman@asu.edu.