Hip Hop 918
Guthrie Green
September 25, 2026
At 53 years old, hip-hop as a genre is starting to show its age. The music that many thought would be a passing fad is now the soundtrack to countless lives. With age comes history, and this year’s edition of the free Hip Hop 918 Festival at Guthrie Green made sure that history won’t be forgotten in Tulsa. Just like in DJ Kool Herc’s famous house party in the Bronx, all four elements of hip-hop—DJing, MCing, breaking, and graffiti—were on display at this year’s festival, honoring hip-hop’s origins not in a million dollar studio but as an expression from marginalized people and communities.
The night started off on graffiti, with Trueson Daugherty, this year’s Hip Hop 918 host, noting that graffiti helped people be seen at a time when they didn’t have a cultural home or a platform; graffiti helped them be visible, and it was a way for them to be remembered. You might recall that when graffiti artists started tagging his fence this summer, Trueson’s response was to do reviews of the graffiti on his social media pages. He’s gained 70,000 followers and counting, all because he chose to honor the art instead of criminalizing it.
On the Guthrie Green lawn, artists Jake Beeson and AWHIZ from Clean Hands Army led an interactive graffiti station where kids were able to spray paint two large wooden canvases—a fun addition to this year’s festival and just one of the night’s activations that helped connect children to hip-hop. One girl wrote the words “Wu-Tang is for the kids,” which her mother proudly encouraged, mentioning that she’d been slowly teaching her kids about hip-hop by introducing groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang.
Another kid learned a different lesson after accidentally turning the nozzle toward himself and spraying a red line across his shirt. He then asked, “Does this wash out?” to which AWHIZ replied, "Nope, but we can create some designs on it.” These hands-on graffiti installations are the kinds of things that spark curiosity and, who knows, maybe the next Clean Hands member.