About This Stamp
In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service celebrated hip hop. Since its inception more than four decades ago, the electrifying music, dance, and art movement has profoundly influenced American and global popular culture.
This pane of 20 stamps features Cade Martin’s photographs depicting four elements of hip hop: MCing (rapping), b-boying (break dancing), DJing, and graffiti art. The bold, digitally tinted images on the stamps are intended to appear in motion. There are five stamps of each design. The words “Forever” and “USA,” “Hip Hop,” and the name of the element featured appear across the top of each stamp. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps, which are highlighted with a vivid yellow, green, red, and black color scheme.
A dynamic youth culture emerged in the mid-1970s at playgrounds and community centers in African American and Afro Caribbean neighborhoods in New York City. The term “hip hop” refers to four creative activities that developed together: rapping, DJing, break dancing, and graffiti art. Even before hip hop music hit the radio airwaves in 1979, teenagers developed hip hop for neighborhood fun, for storytelling and to speak out about social issues overlooked by mainstream society.
Socially conscious community leaders and artists eventually began dedicating their energy to educating and preserving the four elements of hip hop. Understanding the roots of hip hop became a defining part of the culture itself, so much so that this knowledge is now widely known as hip hop’s fifth element.
Over the next several decades, hip hop grew into a global musical and cultural force. Not only are hip hop artists found in every corner of the world, but each scene also brings its own contributions to the art form and tells its own local stories.
The Hip Hop stamps are issued as Forever® stamps. These Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Designer, and Typographer
Antonio Alcalá
Antonio Alcalá served on the Postmaster General’s Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 2010 until 2011, when he left to become an art director for the U.S. Postal Service's stamp development program.
He is founder and co-owner of Studio A, a design practice working with museums and arts institutions. His clients include: the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Phillips Collection, and Smithsonian Institution. He also lectures at colleges including the Corcoran College of Art + Design, SVA, Pratt, and MICA.
In 2008, his work and contributions to the field of graphic design were recognized with his selection as an AIGA Fellow. He has judged international competitions for the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, AIGA, and Graphis. Alcalá also serves on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and Poster House Museum’s advisory councils. His designs are represented in the AIGA Design Archives, the National Postal Museum, and the Library of Congress Permanent Collection of Graphic Design.
Alcalá graduated from Yale University with a BA in history and from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in graphic design. He lives with his wife in Alexandria, Virginia.
Photographer
Cade Martin
Cade Martin grew up in Richmond, Virginia. As the only child of a university art professor and free-thinking mother, he often found himself surrounded by an eclectic cast of characters — sculptors, writers, and painters. His parents nurtured his early fascination of art, its shapes and forms, through family vacations that featured trips to galleries, museums, and studios. Now as a photographer, the Virginia Commonwealth University graduate is still seeking out characters. Whether it’s on a commercial production or embedding himself at the source for one of his many group portrait projects, he enjoys telling their stories, told through the architecture of their faces or the costumes they wear.
Martin’s thirst for adventure grew while shooting stills on movie sets and later as a photographer for National Geographic covering the railways in India. It is that sense of love of adventure that he brings to his productions. He has worked with clients such as Tommy Hilfiger, Coors Brewing Company, Starbucks, the Smithsonian, Marriott International, Target, and the Kennedy Center.
Martin travels worldwide creating images for editorial, advertising, fashion, and lifestyle clients.
His photographs are featured in the 2020 Hip Hop stamp issuance.