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4June 2021
When Notorious B.I.G. dropped “Juicy” in 1995, he took a generation back to their roots with the iconic bars: “
It was all a dream / I used to read Word Up! magazine / Salt ‘N’ Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine”. Long before hip hop went pop, it was an underground scene shaped by local artists like Chicago photographer Raymond Boyd.
Growing up, Boyd used to page through Black-owned magazines like
Ebony and
Jet, marveling at pictures of the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross – whose songs were sampled by hip hop artists he would later photograph. Reading their stories, Boyd was enthralled by tales of struggle and triumph against the odds. “It wasn’t so much gossip,” Boyd recalls. “You read about how they grew up, built their careers, artists who inspired them, how they set up their rehearsals and stage performances. That helped me to learn about them.”