Graffiti illuminates contemporary urban culture, and specific forms of graffiti incorporate different styles and meanings. Most urban graffiti in the United States has been shaped by cultural practices that have emerged out of black neighborhoods and street gang environments. In Denver and elsewhere in the United States, "tagger" or "writer" graffiti is also referred to as "hip hop" graffiti. Denver's hip hop graffiti underground includes beginning writers in their early teens and veterans in their thirties. The underground brings together writers from inner-city and suburban neighborhoods and from circumstances of deprivation and relative affluence. As individuals write hip hop graffiti, they participate in a cultural process rooted in young black culture. Denver's graffiti scene is interwoven with broader cultural processes, and government, police, and corporate responses have generally reflected hip hop graffiti as a social problem. Efforts to criminalize and suppress hip hop graffiti in Denver are considered, as well as cultural innovations reflected in urban graffiti and the politics of culture and crime. References, notes, and photographs