Documentary on Famous Old School Hip-Hop Photographer, "Jamel Shabazz, 'The NowNess!'

Another DOPE Watch to Brush up on your Hip-Hop History, Get Hip to this Photographer, Jamel Shabazz! In the infancy of hip-hop, Brooklyn-born photographer Jamel Shabazz documented the pioneers of music and style who would launch an enduring worldwide phenomenon. Charlie Ahearn, the director of the seminal grafitti movie Wild Style, pays tribute to both Shabazz and those who defined hip-hop before it had definition. More than just vintage shots of kids rocking Puma Suedes, Kangols, and pin-striped Jordaches in Times Square and Fort Greene Park, Shabazz’s photographs have hundreds of (oftentimes tragic) stories behind them, and Ahearn’s Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer gives voice to these images with dozens of interviews with Shabazz himself, graffiti pioneer and hip-hop historian Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, legendary rapper KRS-One, and more. This vibrant portrait of the early years of hip-hop had its world premiere at BAMcinemaFest 2011.

“Anybody who doesn’t appreciate the spirit captured in Jamel Shabazz’s photographs doesn’t get New York.”

—The New York Times