Spend an hour or two at the Saatchi gallery on the Kings Road at the Hip Hop exhibition titled Hip-Hop – Living A Dream, which I think is a play on It was all dream.
It is a collection of photographs by Jamal Shabazz, Joseph Rodriguez and Gregory Bojorquez and the stories about how those images came to be.
It explores hip hop culture and the iconic moments produced by the genre, images which we are mostly all familiar with; by we, I mean children of the 80s who grew up in the 90s when hip-hop was at its peak and we had no idea it would be the last real era of hip-hop in its rawest and truest iteration.
The exhibition gives us an insight into the evolution of rap and the rappers from way back when, that gave this platform its credence. The images emanating from that era, the power of the streets and the weight of their words; lyrics were king, and talent was determined by rhythmic prowess and machination that dismantled one’s opponent or beef with words. Yes there was also a deadly rivalry between rappers that escalated until we lost the two greats of our time way before their time was up. Today, the legacy of Tupac and Biggie forever lives on.
There are many iconic images on display here, like 50 cent at that famous wad of cash fanned out… with him in the background, great depth of profile work here, and after taking the shot, the photographer Gregory Rodriguez gives us a little background after story; after that photo was taken the cash fell and he watched 50 pick up every single dollar bill. There is also the one with DMX where he is in front of a light, I actually thought this was always a microphone but on closer examination of this image in this exhibition, it is actually a light which the rapper turned on himself for the photographer to capture the shot; it is my favourite of DMX, it captures his soul right from within through his eyes. It is one of my favourite images from the exhibition.
The exhibition is only on until the 10th of September in galleries 3 & 4 and its free entry, no reason not to explore and get an inkling into the culture and genre in its realest form.