In the last three months, there have been at least 10 incidents in Oakland of Black males kidnapping or attempting to kidnap Black girls and women to force them into prostitution. The Black communities in Oakland are on high alert in defense of our girls and women, who are being preyed on by these predators.
“There is a real and understandable sense of fear among our Black girls. In some instances, they are prisoners in their own homes when they can’t secure rides outside of public transportation, because many of these kidnappings occur when they are en route to school, work etc. Black girls and women also justifiably feel as this is just another instance of us being the least protected and cared for in this society,” said Selena Wilson, the CEO and executive director of the East Oakland Youth Development Center.
Oakland is a town that has described its street culture in the ironic way of being half revolutionary and half pimp, which seems like an unlivable contradiction on paper. The lives that are lived in Oakland tell a different story.
The Town is still filled with the remnants of old factories and warehouses in this post industrial era and also in the post-crack era. Most of these decaying buildings have turned into fire-trap communes for white youth and artists like the infamous Ghostship commune that burned to the ground on Dec. 2, 2016, in East Oakland, or these buildings were turned into marijuana grows in an emerging cannabis industry where, even locally, Black people en masse have been locked out of the so-called Green Rush for the last 27 years since Prop 215 first got on the ballot.
So local ghetto Black victims of capitalism’s post-crack and de-industrialization era for the most part have been reduced to “niggaz slanging ‘d’ (drugs) and hoes selling pussy meat (prostituting),” as the great Oakland revolutionary rapper Askari X once gave his analysis in an unreleased song, titled “Hide Tonight 2.”
“I believe people’s ideas and feelings about Black women and girls are deeply rooted into the ideas and feelings that were born during slavery – ideas that say things like Black women and girls have an insatiable appetite for sex, or that we’re innately wicked or immoral,” explained Nola Kesia Brantley, the CEO of Nola Brantley Speaks.
“These were all ideas that were born during slavery that live into today that make it easy for people to see Black girls and women being harmed and do nothing about it. I believe we have all become very complacent – including Black people – about harm done to Black women and girls.
“I also believe that human trafficking, and the fact that we have Black women and girls starting at young ages all the way up to grown women on the street in broad daylight being commercially sexually exploited seven days a week, makes it much more unsafe for Black women and girls in our city. On any given Friday night, I could find girls as young as 14, 15 or 16 on the track in underwear, bras and high heels being exploited,” said Nola Brantley.
“DLo he don’t give a fuck about no hoe,
He’ll snatch your hoe and take her to the hoe stroll
DLo you already know tho, don’t give a fuck about a nigga or hoe tho”
– from the song “No Hoe” by D Lo
“No Hoe” by DLo is one of the most celebrated songs coming out of Oakland since the turn of the millennium. Black culture, Hip Hop culture and our political education as a community has to be examined and altered if we want a healthier society in Oakland in the future.
“The kidnapping and exploitation that these girls experience deeply traumatizes them, and it can take years and decades for them to fully recover. It impacts the way they relate to themselves, to others and the world; how they engage in relationships, their ability to trust, their ability to have healthy intimacy, and the list goes on,” said Nola Kesia Brantley, the CEO of Nola Brantley Speaks.
Men and women, adults and youth, the streets, clergy, political, non-profit, community, social, and student organizations need to get involved in coming up with solutions to this kidnapping, pimping and prostitution epidemic in our community.
“There have been a series of community meetings on this state of emergency – one of the outcomes being a comprehensive safety guide. With that said, we recognize we need to do more,” lamented the EOYDC’s Selena Wilson.
“We began doing concentrated outreach around this effort about a week ago. We will be at the Malcolm X Jazz Festival on Saturday, and we’ll plan another special outreach for next week. For more info, contact nola@nolabrantleyspeaks.org,” said Nola Brantley.
JR Valrey, journalist, author, filmmaker and founder of Black New World Media, is also the editor in chief of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. He teaches the Community Journalism class twice a week at the San Francisco Bay View newspaper office.
]]>By Allyssa Victory
The COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago with varying regulation, emergency programs and guidance from all levels of our government. These continue to overlap, creating lots of confusion and questions especially around housing. The U.S. and state of California both declared public health emergencies due to COVID-19 in early 2020. Business as usual was forced to stop as millions of people in the U.S. contracted COVID-19 and died of related illness in the first year of the pandemic alone.
To prevent further crises and to help maintain the economic status quo, each level of our government issued moratoriums on evictions. The federal government and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention issued a ban on evictions in early 2020 until overturned by the Supreme Court. The U.S. Treasury Department has spent over $40B funding the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to support housing stability throughout the pandemic.
Funds from the Treasury’s program were available through city and county level ERAP programs.
California likewise issued an eviction moratorium in early 2020 as well as a foreclosure moratorium due to the declared health emergency. California funded and rolled out its own rent relief program “Housing is Key” which provided 100% rent relief to either landlord or tenant applicants. Counties and cities likewise adopted their own local eviction moratoriums due to declared health emergencies.
Check the specific language of the moratorium(s) in your area but they generally prohibited evictions based on non-payment of rent due to COVID-19. Thus, property owners could still evict this entire time for other bases like illegal conduct. Even when a moratorium is lifted, the eviction cannot be based on non-payment of rent for any period of time that the moratorium was in effect. California and local programs offered 100% relief for back-due rent as well as future payments.
California Governor Newsom ended the state’s public health emergency on Feb. 28, 2023. The federal public health emergency is set to end on May 11, 2023. With the end of the pandemic-related health emergencies, the moratoriums on evictions and related financial assistance programs are set to end. Many moratoriums already included a termination provision that they would end within a certain number of days of the end of the health emergencies. Alameda County ended their local health emergency on March 1, 2023, and their eviction moratorium is required to end 60 days from that date: April 29, 2023.
The Alameda County Supervisors rejected the opportunity to extend the moratorium. However, several moratoriums continue. San Leandro City Council already voted to extend their city’s eviction moratorium to February 2024. Oakland City Council is debating how to wind down its own moratorium and to strengthen tenant protections.
The City of Oakland has been under a local emergency declaration due to homelessness since 2018; has a homeless population that is over 70% Black, and Oaklanders submitted the most applications for Alameda County-level emergency rental assistance due to the pandemic.
Preventing an eviction cliff and not exacerbating Oakland’s homelessness crisis should be the priority of our leadership at this time. Their decision will also affect considerations for the City’s annual budget process that will ramp up in May and conclude by June 30.
Furthermore, decades of unaddressed issues like crumbling roads and high injury corridors caused residents and advocates to petition the City of Oakland to transfer $20M from the police department to the transportation department. This budget campaign is germane as Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao rolled out the “pothole blitz,” as emergency action under the transportation department and promised to complete the backlog of potholes by May 1.
However, the April report to the special Public Works & Transportation Committee documented additional emergency costs and repairs necessitated by the heavy storm season. The report promised that “On May 1, 2023, OakDOT will assess the overall progress of pothole repair and determine whether to return to regularly scheduled paving and maintenance activities provided significant impacts have been made on potholes on prioritized locations.”
The City has publicized conflicting dates and information on its goals and success metrics including the number of unresolved potholes but the Mayor’s update on April 17 confirmed that pothole repair had started.
Note: Pothole repair is separate from road paving under the City’s current 5-year paving plan and the City has cautioned that the pothole blitz “will draw resources from the team that paves residential streets on the paving plans.”
As Oakland’s leadership focuses on repair of City infrastructure, it continues to struggle with trash management and control. Oakland hosted a “Spring Clean” community cleanup the week of Earth Day but these special and volunteer clean-up events put only a slight dent in the proliferation of regular trash around Oakland until our leadership creates adequate trash service and maintenance.
Oakland and Alameda County have sunk millions over the years into failed programs that include criminalization of dumping with installation of surveillance cameras, law enforcement and “no dumping” banners. The 3rd annual conference on Illegal Dumping was held the same week in Oakland hosted by Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley.
However, even Supervisor Miley’s 2019 report demonstrates that we could instead invest in cost-effective solutions that completely resolve illegal dumping in targeted areas including by adding more dumpsters, public trash cans, frequent trash service and relaxing the strict requirements when residents need to dump items.
Oakland is the county seat for Alameda County and must work with its leadership to provide services to residents and workers. The Alameda County Supervisors have now filled the district 2 vacancy with the appointment of Hayward City Councilwoman Elisa Marquez.
If Marquez wants to keep the seat, she will have to win it in the 2024 election. The primary election will be in March 2024. If no candidate reaches 50% + 1 of the vote, then the top two candidates will advance to the November 2024 general election.
Despite Marquez being added to the 5-person board that governs the entire county, all attention has been on Alameda County District Attorney (D.A.) Pamela Price. D.A. Price is the first Black woman elected D.A. in Alameda County’s history and only one of three Black women D.A.s serving across California. Her predecessor Nancy O’Malley was appointed by the county Supervisors in 2009 and won uncontested elections in 2010 and 2014.
In 2018, D.A. Price was the first person to challenge the incumbent D.A. and won over 40% of the vote. D.A. Price won the 2022 election after defeating three opponents. D.A. Price has quickly acted to transition into her role, to keep this critical county office operational and to deliver on her campaign promises.
Members of her Transition Team released a Report on her first 75 days in office. The Report highlights operational changes like updating office technology; staffing expansion to improve services; policy changes designed to address historic disparities; as well as community and educational events D.A. Price has attended. Price was also featured at a support rally on April 23 called by community advocates, victims, and supporters who oppose the negative attacks on criminal justice reform in Alameda County condemn racial biases and disparity in media reporting on D.A. Price.
Allyssa Victory is a civil rights attorney, former Oakland mayoral candidate and community leader. Contact her on Twitter at @Victory4Oakland.
]]>Sitting in a homely bistro on Malcolm X Boulevard, music journalist Greg Tate is bundled up in a peaked beanie, bright yellow scarf, and plenty of padded layers. His threads offer protection from the chill setting down on the Harlem streets outside, streets that have offered a home to a galaxy of Black American icons—from Duke Ellington to Cam’ron—across the last century. When a little-known mixtape track by local rapper Vado starts to pour out of the speakers, Tate breaks from his salmon salad to shake from side to side. At 60, one of the most influential hip-hop writers to ever strut these curbs still keeps his ears wide open.
It was 1981 when Tate jumped on an Amtrak from Washington D.C. to New York City to cover Harlem rap group the Fearless Four’s show at the Roxy, his first assignment for The Village Voice. The following year, he moved to the city, accelerating a blistering career with the Voice that’s included dozens of lengthy columns on culture, politics and, of course, the snowballing hip-hop scene.
“It was like writing war dispatches right there on the ground,” Tate recalls of those early years in NYC. “There was all this incendiary work coming out. It was unprecedented. It didn’t sound like anything that had come before. There was a lot to talk about.”
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If the work of famed music critic Lester Bangs was informed by the sound of rock’n’roll, Tate’s wordplay encapsulated the rhythm and flavor of hip-hop. He drew inspiration from writers he saw as purveyors of “conversational, creative work coming out of Black vernacular” including poet Langston Hughes, jazz critic Amiri Baraka, and Pedro Bell, who wrote liner notes for Funkadelic. Take Tate’s 1989 review of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, which he used to take on the inventive rhyme styles coming out of New York: “Out, out, out my face talking about dope. Man, your shit is tired in a daisy age. The operative word in hip-hop today is freestyle. Well, at least in your big chucklehead mind if you want it to be. It’s your thing, do what you wanna do. I can’t tell you how to sock it. But if I could, I’d advise don’t be redundant.”
Tate’s work helped ignite a generation of writers who covered rap music and culture from the early 1980s right through to the turn of the century. Coming of age with the b-boys, break dancers, and kids who graffiti-bombed subway cars, these scribes connected Ralph Ellison to Eric B, James Baldwin to bling, contextualizing the hip-hop generation and all its innovation. Having experienced this genesis first-hand, they carry the culture’s DNA. They were, and are, hip-hop.
These critics spent their nights prowling New York’s cultural epicenters, relentlessly thirsty for new virtuosity at a time when Gotham’s artistic arteries were pulsing. They smoked weed with the rappers they were covering and got into spats with artists when their reviews weren’t overwhelmingly positive. Writers frequently moved from the pages of The Village Voice, Spin, Billboard, and, later, hip-hop-focused publications like The Source, Vibe, and XXL on a week-to-week, byline-to-byline basis.
Rather than stick to the rigged constraints of traditional music criticism, writers used the music as an entry point into discussing race, identity, youth, and broader culture. They extensively covered politics and social issues, penning groundbreaking pieces on, for example, the L.A. riots, the crack epidemic, and gun laws. Their insights were as cutting as those of KRS-One, Public Enemy, and other socially-engaged artists of the era. At a time when many other glossy magazines were slow to publish writers of color, hip-hop publications amplified their voice.
On the West Coast, magazines like URB, Rap Pages, Rap Sheet, and Murder Dog built on the work of alt-weeklies including L.A. Weekly and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. But, as both the birthplace of hip-hop and the center of America’s publishing industry, New York spawned much of rap’s literary lineage. It’s where many writers and publications gravitated in those early years, their prose mirroring the rhythm of the city.
Eager to extend the outer boundaries of their creativity, many of these writers would go on to ink novels, memoirs, short stories, scripts, and poetry, much of which stayed true to the language and attitude of hip-hop, as though their words were drafted to the sound of a boom-bap beat. It all added up to a low-key literary movement that writer and activist Kevin Powell has dubbed, “The Word Movement.”
“We were dating each other and getting high and drinking. Everything was open bars and velvet ropes,” says Bronx-born critic Miles Marshall Lewis, who began his career in the ’90s. “In my mid 20s, I was enamoured of the Beat Generation—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg—and thinking we would be the new version of that.”
Tracii McGregor, former editor for The Source, remembers the support writers from all over the country offered one another, everyone striving towards a common goal. “We were driven by the fact that we knew this was important work and that we had to do it,” she says. “We had to represent.”
The birth of hip-hop is undisputed. It was August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx, when DJ Kool Herc unveiled his two turntables and a mixer at a back-to-school party in the rec center. The origin of hip-hop journalism, though, is harder to trace.
In his 1982 Village Voice piece “Afrika Bambaataa’s Hip-Hop,” critic Steven Hager has been credited as first to put the then-local term “hip-hop” in an article. Carol Cooper was there shortly after Herc’s breakthrough to cover the burgeoning culture, writing about rappers like Kurtis Blow as early as 1983. Speaking to many of the journalists who would follow, though, there are three names that are consistently mentioned as key forefathers to the movement: Voice writers Nelson George, Barry Michael Cooper, and Greg Tate.
All three arrived in the early ’80s, with different styles and interests. George was focused on the business of hip-hop; Cooper was most connected to the burgeoning scene’s Harlem-Bronx street culture; and Tate often elucidated the links between rap and politics. “It was a good triangulation,” Tate says. “We diverged and played off of one other.”
From these beginnings, hip-hop journalism sprouted a flood of young writers who grew up immersed in the world of beats and rhymes. While white journalists and editors played a role, it was, like the culture itself, primarily a movement led by people of color.
“I had never thought there’d be such a big community of young Black writers, Asian writers, Mexican writers—people who were actually putting their stamp on this new kind of literature,” says Michael A. Gonzales, a prolific journalist who for the last 30 years has written about hip-hop for just about every publication that’s mattered.
It was a hot day back in 1977—the Summer of Sam—when Gonzales’s first toke off a joint coincided with his introduction to hip-hop. At a block party on 151st Street, Gonzales witnessed local legends DJ Hollywood and Lovebug Starski forge daring new sounds from borrowed breakbeats. Growing up in these surroundings—as he puts it, “the height of disco, punk, the blackout; New York is going to shit”—influenced Gonzales’s streetwise style.
Sure enough, in a 1994 profile of Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth for Vibe magazine, Gonzales set the scene with pulpy cinematic detail: “Angry black clouds frown on the skyscraper island of Manhattan, as a brutal rain baptizes the sinful soul of the city. […] A slow-crawling roach lingers on the worn marble staircase as Pete Rock’s rhapsodic rhythms and the silkiness of C.L. Smooth’s lyrics ring through the grimy hall.”
“I’ve always felt like a very New York writer,” Gonzales says. “I liked New York movies, whether they’re old movies like Sweet Smell of Success, or ghetto movies like Across 110th Street or Super Fly, or Jewish movies like something by Neil Simon or Woody Allen—all that’s New York to me. I wanted to channel the story of the New York that I knew.”
As rap music grew in prominence through the ’80s, teen zines such as Right On! and Word Up! made way for glossy magazines solely focused on hip-hop culture. Chief among them was The Source—no single rap publication ever had the same clout, and it’s impossible to think any ever will again. Its Unsigned Hype column is credited with helping launch the Notorious B.I.G., among others. A review in the magazine could instantly elevate a new album to classic status.
Harvard makes for an unlikely rap landmark, but it was there that The Source made its debut in 1988. It was first published as a photocopied newsletter by two white students David Mays and Jonathan Shecter, and two Black students, James Bernard and Ed Young (the latter coming on board soon after its inception). Just a couple of years after that initial issue rolled out, the title was uprooted from Massachusetts to New York, encouraged by Def Jam’s Russell Simmons and Tommy Boy CEO Tom Silverman, who bought ads to help facilitate its rise.
“We used to say every issue was like an album,” Bernard tells me over warm whiskey and cold beer in the Bell House, a Brooklyn bar and venue that the now-entrepreneur is a silent partner in. “We saw it as a work of art.”
The Source’s mic-based rating system became the most trusted scale of quality in rap. Minya “Miss Info” Oh’s five-mic review of Nas’s Illmatic in 1994 might be the most famous 500 words of rap criticism ever committed to print. “Lyrically, the whole shit is on point,” she wrote. “If you can’t at least appreciate the value of Nas’ poetical realism, then you best get yourself up out of hip-hop.”
“That half-mic to five-mic system really meant something to hip-hop artists,” says Tate. “People wanted to start fights with Source writers over reviews—and some writers got terrorized.”
Former New York Times and People freelancer Amy Linden remembers being threatened by Onyx’s Fredro Starr over what he felt was an unflattering portrayal. “He was shooting a video in my neighborhood afterward and he saw me and stepped to me,” Linden says. “I was like, ‘Really? You’re going to give me grief on my corner, with my kid here?’”
During the mid-’90s, when rap artists were spilling blood with tragic regularity, writer Bönz Malone—who describes himself as being “fully immersed in the streets” at the time—admits that not everything he heard being whispered around the neighborhood could be printed. “Journalistic ethics and principles only go but so far,” Malone tells me. “Everything begins and ends with the streets. The story was secondary for me.”
Michael Gonzales found himself locking horns with Damon Dash in 1997. The Roc-A-Fella co-founder wanted a Jay-Z feature pulled from The Source when it was decided that rap supergroup the Firm was going on the cover instead. When his request to have the Jay story cut was refused, Dash pulled up outside the magazine’s office looking to speak to the piece’s writer. “I’m not getting in your car,” Gonzales remembers telling him. “I’ve seen that movie and it didn’t end well.” In the end, The Source ran two covers.
The drama with the artists was reflected within the offices of The Source too. Most of the tension arose from co-founder David Mays and his complex relationship with rapper and entrepreneur Ray “Benzino” Scott. A staff walkout occurred in 1994, when Mays secretly slid an article into the magazine about Benzino’s group the Almighty RSO—a clique Mays just happened to be managing—behind the backs of his editorial team.
Fellow co-founder James Bernard was among those who broke ties with The Source after Mays’ indiscretion. Bernard points to his white colleague’s thirst for rap credibility as his ultimate undoing. “His fatal flaw was he had a ghetto phase,” says Bernard. “And he needed the approval of those who he saw as real and authentic.”
The Source picked up the pieces following the staff walkout. Editor-in-chief Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and his team expanded the realm of hip-hop journalism in the mid to late-’90s, incorporating new, hungry writers and even publishing fiction. By then, The Source was almost as thick as Vogue. It also had serious competition from Vibe, which started rolling out regular issues in 1993 with the backing and connections of Quincy Jones. The rivalry pushed each magazine to be better, and the staff pages of both form a call sheet of the era’s key journalistic players.
“Vibe came in as a challenge to [The Source],” says kris ex, a native New Yorker who wrote for both publications, plus many others. “Vibe had money and infrastructure, whereas The Source just kind of happened. It was this newsletter that grew and then they started making things up as they went along.”
That lack of structure likely played a role in The Source’s turbulent history. Turmoil returned to the magazine in the new millennium, from sexual harassment lawsuits, to the ongoing suspicion that record scores were being tampered with, to a beef with Eminem led by Mays and Benzino, who by this point had been added to the masthead as a co-owner. The pair were eventually forced out of the organization.
“It became very difficult to watch it spiral,” says Tracii McGregor, who was on staff at the time. “We had so many amazing thinkers and writers who elevated that magazine to the stature it became. To see that squandered, it hurt.”
For his part, Bernard still can’t help but ponder what might have been if things had shaken out differently. “The Source, at some point, was positioned to be Vice—we were there first,” he says, considering the squandered potential. “None of us really understood that hip-hop would become bigger than we ever thought it would be. … Did we blow it? Maybe.”
Though several hip-hop publications of the ’90s have foundered in the 21st century, Mass Appeal, another hip-hop enterprise with ties to the culture’s origins, is thriving. Launched as a magazine in 1996, Mass Appeal has grown along with rap culture, and today, their offices in Lower Manhattan host the company’s website, label, and creative agency. A shelf above the reception desk is decorated with LPs by J Dilla, DJ Shadow, Run the Jewels, all dropped on Mass Appeal Records. Books purposefully scattered about the place include works by Word Movement alums dream hampton and Touré. The playlist bumping over the speaker system includes Dipset and Future. In the back of the office is a recording studio where Nas, a Mass Appeal investor, is due to finish his forthcoming album.
My guide through the workspace is Sacha Jenkins, the company’s creative director. Thirty years ago, Jenkins, then a Bronx graffiti star, put out the zine Graphic Scenes & Xplicit Language, an early attempt to cover NYC’s burgeoning hip-hop scene journalistically. “I’d always had an interest in documenting hip-hop because I knew there was something important about it,” he says.
Later, attending a community college in upstate New York, Jenkins picked up extra knowledge about publishing by working on the school paper. Surprised that the print bill wasn’t as high as he’d figured, the young writer decided to launch his own hip-hop newspaper upon returning to the city. Alongside friend Haji Akhigbade, a producer with solid connections, Jenkins founded Beat Down in the early ’90s. From the shoulders of that publication, ego trip was launched in 1994 by Jenkins and creative partners Elliott Wilson, Jeff “Chairman” Mao, and Henry Chalfant. Adopting the tagline, “The arrogant voice of musical truth,” the publication took on rap stars and underground scenes with irreverence and attitude for four years, stopping around the same time that the internet began changing the world of publishing.
The golden age of rap journalism probably ends with the decline in both music sales and print media—less money for expensive album launches and 4,000-word artist profiles—as well as the rise of blogging culture and social media. “I don’t think people are curious they way that they used to be,” laments Amy Linden. “How can we expect thoughtfulness when we’re interested in hashtags and tweets and fast thoughts?” As Jenkins puts it, “If I had to depend on writing about hip-hop, I’d be fucked right now.”
Back when he was sinking drinks with his peers at industry parties, Miles Marshall Lewis thought a hip-hop literary movement was inevitable. Looking back, did the generation achieve the levels he hoped? “To a degree,” says Lewis. “I presumed we were all going to end up with reputations like Ta-Nehisi Coates has now, but I don’t think that really happened.”
Even so, there’s no doubt the writers of the Word Movement have made an impact, changing how subsequent generations think about literature. For instance, before Coates won the National Book Award for his powerful treatise on racial injustice in America, 2015’s Between the World and Me, he was a teenager taking in the work of people like Greg Tate while decoding Chuck D lyrics. “Hip-hop in those days was a great pop intellectual movement,” he once wrote.
Meanwhile, many involved in the Word Movement continue to create, both in and out of the world of music journalism. Touré and Kevin Powell are among those to author of several books. Gonzales has penned short stories on everything from crime to science fiction. Lewis himself wrote a memoir capturing the genesis of hip-hop in the Bronx. Today, kris ex still writes about music for various outlets, including Pitchfork. Tate pens five or six pieces a year for The Wire magazine and is working on his fifth book. The list goes on.
At Mass Appeal, Jenkins continues to connect the dots between past, present, and future as much as anyone. Constantly testing new ways of promoting and documenting rap culture in a mutating media industry, he sees parallels between the early hip-hop magazines and modern online publications. Today, the unending interest in hip-hop and the need for it to be documented gives Jenkins the same sense of importance that he felt the first time he photographed graffiti in the Bronx.
“Being a person of color working on a platform that a lot of people have access to, it’s important for me to say something every time I do something,” Jenkins asserts. “For many of us, hip-hop is an identity, and for others it’s a commodity that has travelled the world. People have made lots of money off it it, and also people have been very inspired by it.”