Rap Is Risen

For nearly forty years, New York City-based photographer Sue Kwon has captured the creative zeitgeist of the Big Apple. Her post-graduate job at the Village Voice engrossed her in documenting fashion runways and music clubs, which progressed to her producing press images for upcoming hip hop artists on Def Jam, Sony and Loud Records. Rap is Risen: New York Photographs 1988-2008 collects Kwon’s portraits of some of the most well known hip hop artists during a twenty year period where rap music rose from the underground to topping the charts. Utilizing both gritty black and white film and color photography, Kwon’s lens recorded a culture shifting, with its rising stars in posed press shots that enforce big personas as well as casual, lighthearted candids from tour, the studio and home life. Method Man brushing his teeth backstage, Fat Joe and Big Pun playing softball in a Bronx park and Big Daddy Kane relaxing at home among silk bedsheets are some of the more vulnerable, unique moments caught by Kwon. Her images of the Notorious B.I.G. at his Life After Death album listening party a mere eleven days before his untimely death are also included as an influential document of the era and its unfortunate losses. As a fan, friend and insider, Kwon encapsulated the rawness and realness of hip hop as its key documentarian from the late 80s into the millennium, creating images as legendary as their subjects.

•9.5″W x 1.25″D x 11.5″H

•photography by Sue Kwon
•introduction by Jeff Mao
•hardcover
•272 pages