Freestyle Fellowship, all images via Deverill Weekes
Donna-Claire is the Jesus Lazardo of the literary world.
Martin Pearson and Deverill Weekes were newly transplanted Angelenos when the unfiltered culture of ’90s rap rose up from underground music scenes. The two London natives originally met working on a project featuring a young Ice-T, when Pearson was a UK music journalist and Weekes was a photographer fresh out of school. Together, they captured the vibrant essence of the burgeoning genre. Neither of the pair had any idea that they were capturing history until much later.
“I interviewed Prince back in the ’90s and his [2016] death triggered me to go through my old material,” Pearson tells me. “And I realized what I had, and that it would make an interesting collection—putting it all together and viewing it through the lens of history gave it new life.”
What followed was a period of deep research and thumbing through the archives to assemble together Hip-Hop Rising: Profiles of the ’90s. The text brings together rare interviews along with modern commentary. Weekes’ brilliant photos provide a time capsule of “the last decade before the internet took over.” It features interviews with everyone from Ice-T to Eazy-E, the Beastie Boys to Queen Latifah and Coolio.
“I ran around the iconic Farmers Market in Los Angeles with the Beastie Boys to try and find the perfect place to take photos,” Dev recalls. Dev’s early work was guided by what natural light and creative ingenuity had to offer. The photos in Hip-Hop Rising aren’t studio portraits. Instead, Dev describes them as, “real, raw, earthy, alive, unprocessed and immediate.” From cross processing slide film in color negative chemicals to light leaks, the imperfections on these images are characters in their own right.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been going through and cleaning up my office, and at one point had about 20 rolls of sleeved and unorganized film piled up on my writing desk. Holding the negatives was powerful–a reminder of how we’ve become desensitized to the value of tangible memories. It is the same sensation I got while reading Hip-Hop Rising, this sense that the weight of memory may never be this substantial again.
I spoke with Martin and Dev about the process of putting together Hip-Hop Rising, cataloging history in an AI and doom scrolling-infested world, and the value of preserving conversations with late artists.
Another choice is the Beastie Boys. They were pretty wild and out of control… It was a case of trying to keep up to capture it all.
