Letter from RESPECT. Founder

I’m honored to curate along with longtime collaborator, Datwon Thomas, “Brooklyn’s Finest: Legends in Focus” — a civic installation opening February 4 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, presented as part of Black History Month.

This installation brings together a selection of photographs that honor Brooklyn’s sizable impact on hip-hop culture and the photographers who helped document it. Hip-hop is one of New York City’s great cultural gifts to the world, and photography has been essential to how that story has been seen, remembered, and carried forward across generations.

With a limited number of images, it’s impossible to represent every Brooklyn rap artist, era, or neighborhood that helped build the legacy. Instead, this installation focuses on a tightly curated group of works reflecting the spirit, pride, and influence of Brookly —celebrating Hip-Hop icons whose lives and cultural contributions are deeply rooted in the borough.

At the heart of this display is the work of Jamel Shabazz, the legendary Brooklyn-born street photographer whose images have come to define generations of NY life, culture, and self-expression. His photographs are inseparable from Brooklyn’s visual history and from the lived experience of street culture itself.

The installation also features contributions from Matthew Salacuse, Mike Schreiber, Sarah A. Freeman, Justin Jay, and Lisa Leone—documentarians whose work captured BK icons in their respective emerging moments. The display is anchored by one of the most iconic portraits in music history: Baron Claiborne’s timeless image of The Notorious B.I.G., a photograph forever linked to BK’s imprint on the world.

At the center of the installation is a sequence honoring The Greatest Day in Hip-Hop History—a historic moment I helped organize in 1998 that brought together one of the most extraordinary assemblies of artists ever captured in a single image. While Harlem is the Mecca, Brooklyn showed up—and this moment belongs here because the culture has always moved between boroughs. The image featured here was captured by Gordon Parks’ trusted protégé, Johanna Fiore, whose lens preserves that day from a rare and personal vantage point. There also two images by yours truly capturing Busta Rhymes and Rakim on that day in 1998. Being in the right place at the right time is often what makes photography magical.

Additionally, a proclamation will be given to Hip-Hop pioneer, Fab5Freddy.

As a proud Brooklyn native, and as a co-founder of XXL Magazine/xxlmag.com and founder of RESPECT., the photo journal of hip-hop culture, it’s an honor for my firm iD8 Entertainment to underwrite and curate this installation in a civic space where New Yorkers can experience these images together.

Thank you to the Brooklyn Borough Hall President’s Office (Donavan Swanson and Roslyn Campbell) and the Borough Hall team for making space for public cultural storytelling.

— Jonathan A. Rheingold
Curator / Producer / RESPECT. Founder

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Image Copyright Justin Jay

Artist: Jay Z

Photographer: Justin Jay https://www.justinjay.com

Date:  Saturday, December 13, 2003

 

“He leads by example. Everything that he does, he makes good decisions. One thing that people don’t understand is that he’s, like, the hardest-working person in music, period.” —Wale on Jay-Z, MTV, November 2009

The post RESPECT. Throwback Featuring Jay Z / Words: Elliott Wilson & Image: Justin Jay appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Ironically, the album titled the turning point in the career of then 30-year-old Jay Z.  The Blueprint laid out the direction in which his already legend would become legendary.  The symbolic and iconic masterpiece was a defining moment in the genius of music.  The Blueprint, executively produced by Shawn “Jay Z” Carter, Damon Dash, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, oozes Roc-A-Fella epicness since September 11, 2001 until now.  The album also holds a sadden memory that day, the day of the 9/11 attacks that the world will never forget.  In Hip Hop, the album was the beginning of the end of a trilogy that will go down in the history books of greatest of all time.  The all-in-blue memento was perfectly written and stories were perfectly told.  Producing handles by some of the greats: Kanye West, Just Blaze, Trackmaster, Timbaland, Bink, and Eminem, who also lended a hand as the album’s solo guest contributor on one of the hardest tracks, “Renegade.”  The beat hits so hard as the vocals ring off in your ears and Jigga and Eminem’s bars flow so fluently together.

After hitting you so hard once it would only be appropriate that Jigga came through for the ladies on “Girls, Girls, Girls.”  On the track, Jay Z gets around the globe showing love to every type of woman there is.  He gives us tears with “Song Cry,” behind a hot melody and a brilliant storyline; “They say you can’t turn a bad girl good, but once a good girl’s gone bad, she’s gone forever…” The meaning runs deep, the feeling is real, and the the tone is raw in expression.  “Never Change” forever holds an authenticity that can never be denied, “I’ll never change, this is Jay all day…”

“The Takeover” is timeless and was done effortless in response to the famous beef at that moment in time; “Ask Nas, he don’t want it with Hov, nooo!”  Jay made the statement of all with “The Ruler’s Back” and shows there is no love with “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)”, later performed with Mary J. Blige.  “U Don’t Know” reigns as the greatest track on The Blueprint, “U don’t know what you do…”  “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” is the album’s anthem, “I can’t leave rap alone, the game needs me…”  The Blueprint is truly a classic, all 13 tracks included plus two bonus tracks, “Breathe Easy (Lyrical Exercise) and “Girls, Girls, Girls (Remix)”  To Hip Hop this spells legendary and the best Hov album in history; not to mention his very own closing remark in the thank you’s:

“To This Whole Fake Bulls**t Industry, Thanx 4 being so Fake and Keeping me on my Toes!!! I Love Ya’ll Holla Back!”

-Jay Z

Suggested Articles:

Two Legends: Jay Z + Nas. Two Albums DONE!

Jay Z Details Creative Process of ‘Reasonable Doubt’ in 1997 Interview

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