Gang Starr Drawing | Golden Era Hip Hop
Gang Starr Drawing | Golden Era Hip Hop
Where I lived, new music came through weekly radio shows, magazines and mail-order record lists. We listened to Radio 1 shows like National Fresh and, before that, Jeff Young's Big Beat Show on Friday nights, recording them onto cassette. We'd scour each new issue of Hip Hop Connection for releases, then spend Saturdays travelling to Musiquarium in Swansea or Spillers Records in Cardiff to search for the records.
Like skateboarding, I tended to gravitate towards whatever felt further underground. By the early 90s, DJ Premier and Guru seemed to be everywhere I looked for new music. At one point, it felt like Gang Starr were on Yo! MTV Raps every time I watched it, with tracks like Form of Intellect, Take It Personal and later Mass Appeal. Step in the Arena, Daily Operation and Hard to Earn are still the three Gang Starr albums I return to most.
In 1993, hearing DWYCK in Julien Stranger's part in Underworld Element's Skypager was a peak moment for me. It was a trifecta: Julien Stranger, DWYCK and my favourite company at the time. I've still got four-hour VHS tapes filled with Yo! MTV Raps episodes and old skate videos somewhere.
Skate videos were another place to discover music, while listening for samples in hip hop led backwards into older jazz, soul and funk records. One thing continually opened a route into something else.
Martyn Goodacre's photograph holds a lot of that history in one image: Gang Starr, Daily Operation, San Francisco and the period when finding music still involved following whatever clues you could get hold of. Drawing it meant spending time with the photograph again and noticing details that would be easy to pass over now.
Limited edition prints available 8x10 | 11x14 | 12x16