Japanese Breakfast releases her highly-anticipated third album, Dark0 drops an atmospheric debut, and Loraine James’ record is a genre-hopping masterpiece
Now, as a way of raising funds to benefit his non-profit, Smith got his paints out and sprayed 200 pairs of adidas Forum sneakers using his ‘rain painting’ technique, with the results set to go on sale next week (June 10 to be precise). With no two pairs the same, the unique footwear further blurs the line between fashion and art – and whether the lucky 200 people to get their hands on a pair choose to stick their feet on them or give them pride of place on a shelf remains to be seen.
In celebration of the Forum’s launch, Smith joined forces with director Rick Rocha to create
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.”