Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He gained wider recognition in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Christopher George Latore Wallace, known by the stage names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, and Biggie, was an American rapper. Rooted in the New York rap scene and gangsta rap traditions, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his distinctive, laidback lyrical delivery, offsetting his lyrics' often grim content. His music was usually semi-autobiographical, telling of hardship and criminality but also of debauchery and celebration.
Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight Jr. is an American record executive, former NFL player, and convicted felon, who is the co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records. Knight was a central figure in gangsta rap's commercial success in the 1990s. This feat is attributed to the record label's first two album releases: Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992 and Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle in 1993. Knight is currently serving a 28-year sentence in prison for a fatal hit-and-run in 2015.
"Hit 'Em Up" is a diss track by American rapper 2Pac, featuring the Outlawz. It is the B-side to the single "How Do U Want It", released on June 4, 1996. The song's lyrics contain vicious insults to several East Coast rappers, chiefly Shakur's former friend turned rival, the Notorious B.I.G.. The song was recorded at Can Am Studios on April 19, 1996. A previous version of the song was recorded on October 31, 1995.
The East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry is a dispute between artists and fans of the East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop scenes in the United States, especially from the mid-1990s. A focal point of the rivalry was the feud between East Coast–based rapper the Notorious B.I.G. signed by Puff Daddy and their New York City–based label, Bad Boy Records, and West Coast–based rapper Tupac Shakur signed by Suge Knight and their Los Angeles–based label, Death Row Records. Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were murdered in drive-by shootings within six months of each other, after which the feud entered a truce with a "peace" summit in 1997 at the behest of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
"Who Shot Ya?" is a song by American rapper the Notorious B.I.G., backed by Sean Combs. Bad Boy Entertainment released it on February 21, 1995, on an alternate reissue of Wallace's single "Big Poppa/Warning". Its new B-side "Who Shot Ya", a revision of a track already issued earlier in 1995, was "controversial and hugely influential." Widely interpreted as a taunt at Tupac Shakur, the single provoked a "rap battle" between the two rappers, formerly friends.
Janette Beckman is a British documentary photographer who has worked in London, New York and Los Angeles. Beckman describes herself as a documentary photographer. While she produces a lot of work on location, she is also a studio portrait photographer. Her work has appeared on records for the major labels, and in magazines including Esquire,Rolling Stone,Glamour,Italian Vogue,The Times,Newsweek,Jalouse,Mojo and others.
Ricky Powell was an American photographer who documented popular culture including hip hop, punk rock, graffiti, and pop art. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, The Village Voice, TIME, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, among other publications. His photographs included candid portraits of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Madonna, in addition to many other popular culture artists and other common people. His photographs were included in the books The Rap Photography of Ricky Powell! (1998), The Rickford Files: Classic New York Photographs (2000), Frozade Moments: Classic Street Photography of Ricky Powell (2004), and Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs (2005) and were exhibited both domestically and internationally.
The Killing of Tupac Shakur is a biographical, true crime account by American journalist and author Cathy Scott of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. The book made news upon its September 1997 release, on the first anniversary of Shakur's death, because of an autopsy photo included in its pages. It was the first book to be released covering the rapper's death. The book was reprinted in the UK by Plexus Publishing and in Poland by Kagra. Coverage of the autopsy photo, taken of Shakur's body on a gurney in the coroner's examining room, catapulted the book onto the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. New editions of the book were released in 2002 and 2014.
The Murder of Biggie Smalls is a non-fiction true crime book by author and journalist Cathy Scott. Published in October 2000 by St. Martin's Press, it covers the March 9, 1997 murder of the Notorious B.I.G. in a drive-by shooting. A second updated edition of the book was released in September 2021.
Bill Adler is an American music journalist and critic. Since the late 1960s, he has worked in the music business in a variety of capacities, including as a record store clerk, radio disc jockey, critic, publicist, biographer, record label executive, documentary filmmaker, museum consultant, art gallerist, curator, and archivist. He is known best for his tenure as director of publicity at Def Jam Recordings (1984–1990), the period of his career to which the critic Robert Christgau was referring when he described Adler as a "legendary publicist".
Charles Alan Philips was an American writer and journalist. He was best known for his investigative reporting in the Los Angeles Times on the culture, corruption, and crime in the music industry during the 1990s and 2000s, which garnered both awards and controversy. In 1999, Philips won a Pulitzer Prize, with Michael A. Hiltzik, for their co-authored series exposing corruption in the entertainment industry.
The American rapper Christopher Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G., was murdered in a drive-by shooting in the early hours of March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles, California. He was 24 years old. Prior to the event, Wallace promoted his second studio album Life After Death, and attended an after-party in Los Angeles instead of traveling to London.
Brian Cross, better known as B+, is an Irish photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He is a co-founder of Mochilla, a film and music production company. He predominantly photographed the Los Angeles' hip hop scene in the 1990s as well as helped create album art for a number of artists including Q-Tip, Eazy-E, Damian Marley, DJ Shadow, and J Dilla.
Michael Benabib is an American portrait photographer, known for his portraits of David Bowie, Tupac Shakur, Sean Combs, and Keith Richards among others. Notable portrait photography of public figures include Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and Loretta Lynch. His work has appeared in publications including Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, Vibe, ESPN magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR and Newsweek. His work was included to photography collections on display by The Smithsonian and MoMa.
Vikki Tobak is a culture journalist, author, independent curator, and producer born in Soviet-era Kazakhstan who was raised in the United States. She reports about and creates content regarding politics, arts, social justice and music photography.
The Annenberg Space for Photography was an exhibition space in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles' Westside. Founded in March 2009, it was dedicated to displaying photographic works, ranging from artistic to journalistic, using both traditional photographic prints and modern digital techniques.
Barron Claiborne is an American photographer and cinematographer who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He began taking photographs at the age of ten. After moving to New York in 1989 he began assisting established photographers such as; Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Saint Claire Born, and Richard Numeroff. His photographic mentor, was Gordon Parks.
Ithaka Darin Pappas, known professionally as Ithaka, is an American-born multidisciplinary artist of Greek ancestry who creates using music, writing, sculpture and photography. He has authored a collection of short stories, entitled Ravenshark Chronicles published in international magazines and periodicals, which have sometimes been the basis for his travel-oriented lyrical content. In a 2005 article for the magazine Waves, journalist Ricardo Macario described Ithaka as "The Miscellaneous Man". In a 2008 review of Ithaka's sixth album Saltwater Nomad, the online surf-culture platform Surfline stated that "the artist effortlessly traverses at ease between all of his choses mediums of expression [music, sculpture, writing and photography]", and that "his life's journey is a soulful balancing act somewhere between the worlds of euphoric creation and aquatic diversion."
Christopher Chijioke"Chi" Modu was a Nigerian-born American photographer known for his photos of various pioneering hip-hop music entertainers which "helped set the visual template for dozens of hip-hop stars." Hypebeast, which interviewed him in 2017, covered his 2021 death.
