You may not be familiar with the name Chi Modu, but you most certainly know his work. During his 21-year career, Modu has shot some of contemporary Hip Hop’s most iconic images. From Biggie’s famed Coogi,
Kangol and Versace shades shot with the twin Towers in the backdrop, to Tupac’s infamous shirtless and tatted torso, with arms raised to the bandanna knotted across his forehead; Pac’s eyes are shut while flame shaped barbs of smoke waft upwards. He was the modern Blues man, talented, tortured, and supremely contradictory, and Chi captured all of that with a snap of his shutter. About his professional origins, Chi comments, “As soon as I touched a camera, I knew it was for me. I started
bangin’ around at free newspapers in [New York] city, and I got a job at the Amsterdam News shooting pictures. I was getting paid $15 a photo; a roll of film cost me $8, processing was $7, subway tokens [were] a total of $4, so I didn’t make much money, but I was a photographer.”
While most photographers simply pop pictures, Modu captures life. His
stills breathe and tell a story every time they’re viewed. Throughout this veteran photojournalist’s pictorial path he has given Hip Hop heads a glimpse behind the images that have come to define the most prolific period of Rap music thus far. Chi is part of a very elite club of “shuttas”
who had an early eye for a powerful, young medium growing in cities and
settlements all over America with sights set on the world. Chi forged headlong into that movement and would eventually sit on the shoulders of fostering Rap giants. There’s a history behind every shot, and Chi tells it like it was with unique ocular insight. He’s respected in every industry, and his photographs are frequently sought for advertisements, television, movies and documentary films. In addition to being held in private collections, Chi’s work has also been licensed by Paramount, Viacom, Sony, and The London Times, as well as The New York Times.
The list of luminaries that Chi Modu has helped to immortalize reads like a virtual prediction of ‘Who’s destined to be Who’: Eazy E, Nas, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang Clan, Mike Tyson, DJ Grandmaster Flash, EPMD, and even a hungry young A&R named Sean Combs back when he was just “Puffy.” Chi got in on the culture’s ground floor when in 1991 he joined the team at the pioneering Source magazine. Chi would ultimately become the eye of the popular publication, landing thirty-four covers during his tenure – which ended in 1997 – far more
than any other photographer in the 22-year history of the brand.
HHW: Where are you from Chi?
Chi Modu: Well, I was born in Nigeria into the Biafran Civil War (July 6, 1967–January 15, 1970). There was beef between the Igbo and the non-Igbos. I’m one of five kids, and while my family was in Nigeria, my dad was here finishing out his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. So during the war he was scared to death. He didn’t know what was going on with his family. So my mom held it down with the “crew,” and then we joined him here in 1969.
HHW: Where did your family first settle once here in the states?
Chi Modu: We first moved to the middle of New Jersey, which is Princeton. From there we moved to Lawrenceville, where I grew up. You were very young when your family arrived. Do you recall the adjustment? I always grew up in the suburbs and in white neighborhoods, but the funny thing about it is, I never lived in the hood, but I always felt at home in the hood.
HHW: Why was that comfort so easily acquired?
Chi Modu: Because I’m African. I’m Nigerian, so it was easy for me to connect with my people even though I didn’t grow up right next to them. In my home it was like we lived on an island because we had a tradition in the house – we only spoke Igbo. It was my dad’s way of keeping the culture in us. So I still have the language, but if I speak it, I speak it with a
New Jersey accent – LOL!
HHW: Was your family supportive of your interests in Hip Hop culture?
Chi Modu: My household was very education-based. My dad worked at ETS (Educational Testing Service), which is in Princeton, NJ; they do all of the placement exams and SAT’s, so my dad’s one of the smartest people that you can ever meet. He’s like a math genius! But how he found out about my doing Hip Hop was when he saw The Source cover for EPMD. He was like, “You know what Chi? You need to stay right there. You’re at the right place. You’re involved in a movement.” I know a lot of folks don’t get that kind of support from their family. But my dad and my mom were very supportive, and these are people that heard Malcom X speak in Ghana when they were living there. So although I grew up in what I grew up in, I was still always very connected to my community.
HHW: So where’d you spend most of your time as a youth, and when and why did you decide you wanted to be a photographer?
Chi Modu: Pretty much in Lawrenceville, NJ, then I went off to Rutgers University and ‘did my time!’ I did economics, and after that I went into New York and worked at a camera store for about nine months or so, then this guy came in who had this real estate company around the corner, so I went and worked there for about another eight months or so doing administrative work – I hated it! I saw Mandela was freed from prison in South Africa and they did a ticker-tape parade in New York City for him, and I saw it on the back pages of the Daily News. I was like, “Ya’know, I’m supposed to be at these things. I’m not supposed to be sitting in the office. I need to be there to document and record it.” That was what made me want to start breaking out.
HHW: We both know this was before the days of digital, so you had to actually learn the full craft to be a pro. What were your first steps?
Chi Modu: I had a little dark room. I bought a used enlarger from the classifieds and taught myself how to print. I started making these black and white prints, and I’d do them in my bedroom, basically, at my brother’s place where I was staying briefly. So I brought the trays in and kinda taught myself how to print there.
HHW: What was your first photo gig, and how’d you get it?
Chi Modu: It was at the Amsterdam News in Harlem. I went in to meet with this guy Don Rojas, and Don was the managing editor at the time. He flipped through my homemade portfolio and said, “Alright kid, I can give you something to do.” I started bouncing around, covering Al Sharpton and all the issues of that day. That was around the Tawanna Brawley era.
HHW: Was the money good at the beginning?
Chi Modu: I didn’t get paid unless a photo ran. If the photo ran they’d give me $15 for it, so you can imagine, I’m spending all of this money on tokens and processing. By the time it was done I hadn’t made any money, but I got something into print. So that was the start of my career.
HHW: The Amsterdam News was the urban community’s old guard in terms of covering the issues and information that was relevant to us. But then something came along for the youth generation and the emerging sub-culture called Hip Hop – The Source. How’d you make that jump?
Chi Modu: At that time, Kevin Powell was writing at the Amsterdam News. He and I went to Rutgers together, so we actually knew each other from college. He mentioned this magazine called The Source that was bubblin’, and there was this woman, Dream Hampton, who was looking for somebody to do some photo work for them. Dream was actually a film major at NYU. What’s funny is, since she worked in film, they probably thought she knew photo, too. I went to The Source and met up with (David) Mays and (Jon) Shecter at the time. I started to shoot little things for them; I shot the Ed Lover & Dr. Dre cover at YO! MTV Raps, which was my first Source cover. After a while, all of the artists started figuring out that if they stood for my camera, they would end up in the magazine. So it happened kinda organically where I became the eye for the magazine.
HHW: How many of The Source’s covers did you shoot?
Chi Modu: During my run there I did about 34 covers for The Source, and I don’t think anyone else to this day can say that, and I haven’t done a cover since ’97. It was a unique time and a unique situation. I didn’t shoot Hip Hop to be cool or to hang around music. I looked at it as a responsibility. My feeling was that somebody from the community must document this stuff for it to stay in the community, so it was actually a mission of mine. I was trying to cover everybody, and not to get in the clubs necessarily, but to create an archive that would live, 30, 40, 50 years later. But in order to do that, you have to sacrifice money in the short run.
HHW: Was the money at The Source better than the Am News?
Chi Modu: It’s funny now, because if you flashback to the stuff I was doing then, like that Tupac picture where he’s smoking and tying his bandana to the front, that was during that tenure, but that picture’s licensed for way more money than that since, and I own the rights to all my images. So although I wasn’t getting paid much, I ended up owning the work. That was a business decision that I made, “Let me just take advantage of having this access, and have some control over the history and what’s done with it.”
HHW: How have you been able to affect the history?
Chi Modu: I’ve been very protective of a lot of these artists. I remember when Snoop was up on gun charges, and he was on the cover of Newsweek when they were trying to put him in jail – this was the early Snoop. I had pictures of him holding guns. At that age (18), he always had two loaded, semiautomatic 380 pistols with him. He was still riding in the streets with his boys. He was still ‘bangin’! So I had a slew of pictures of Snoop with guns, but I didn’t release one of them, and I knew I could’ve sold and licensed them to a lot of places, but I was like, “You know what? My responsibility is greater than whatever check I could collect in the short run,” so I didn’t release the photos. That’s always been my mentality because I have the utmost respect for the talent of the people that I work with – The utmost! That’s part of why we got along so well.
HHW: So many of the most powerful pictures to come out of Hip Hop’s defining decade (1990-2000) resulted from circumstances that you were able to create organically. Can you share one of those stories with us?
Chi Modu: I was shooting Snoop for the cover of Rap Pages magazine in 1993. Sheena Lester, the editor, asked me would I wanna shoot Snoop. I said, “Sure.” She didn’t buy me a plane ticket out to L.A., so I got a friend to get me a buddy-pass. I had like $60 to my name. My friend Chris Latimer was staying at The Mondrian (a swanky hotel in West Hollywood), so I called him and he said, “Sure, you can stay on my couch.” I said, “Cool, ‘cause I gotta do this shoot with Snoop.” He was like, “I’ll ride out with you.”Back then, Chris was pushing the AACA (African American College Alliance) hoodies. So I said, “No problem. I’ll put Snoop in one.” That ended up being the picture on the cover of Rap Pages, Snoop in the AACA hoodie.
HHW: Did you stay in contact with Snoop after that shoot?
Chi Modu: When it came time for his album, I got a call from the people out in L.A. saying, “Snoop wants you to do his album.” If you can flashback to that time, his album was heavily anticipated. It was really like the first big Hip Hop album, and it came after The Chronic, so everyone knew that Snoop was going to be a big deal. So I flew out to do his album work and we’ve been cool ever since. I don’t see Snoop much at all. Like a lot of people I shoot, I don’t see them, but when I run into them we’re cool. Their lives have gone down the paths that they’ve gone, but one thing that they always do remember is the person that photographed them before everybody else was photographing them because that’s such an important part of their careers. Snoop has done thousands of photo shoots since the two I’ve done with him, but I guarantee you he remembers the ones that we did together.
HHW: I remember seeing you on Youtube speaking about your first time meeting a young artist named Nas. Can you share that story, briefly?
Chi Modu: I remember seeing a 17-year-old Nas in Queensbridge before Illmatic came out. The first time I met him was when he did “Half Time” for Zebrahead. Then, when Illmatic came out I took a ride out to Queensbridge and he met me on the corner outside of Queensbridge projects. We went inside & upstairs and shot some pictures in the hallway and on the roof of the buildings. We shot in his bedroom with his homies and there were no parents around, just this buncha kids. I tell people this all the time, I went to college and that guy was smarter than me – I knew that right away! LOL! The way that guy had mastered the English language, I was extremely impressed. My feeling as a Black male was if we could harness and direct this energy in a positive way, it’d be over! Things would change. That’s where it was going, and then, BOOM - Pac’s outta there! BOOM - Biggie’s outta there! Everyone else that came after was too scared to say anything that mattered. It’s a shame because those guys were on their way to actually tackling substance, and they got
taken out before they could even get going.
Kangol and Versace shades shot with the twin Towers in the backdrop, to Tupac’s infamous shirtless and tatted torso, with arms raised to the bandanna knotted across his forehead; Pac’s eyes are shut while flame shaped barbs of smoke waft upwards. He was the modern Blues man, talented, tortured, and supremely contradictory, and Chi captured all of that with a snap of his shutter. About his professional origins, Chi comments, “As soon as I touched a camera, I knew it was for me. I started
bangin’ around at free newspapers in [New York] city, and I got a job at the Amsterdam News shooting pictures. I was getting paid $15 a photo; a roll of film cost me $8, processing was $7, subway tokens [were] a total of $4, so I didn’t make much money, but I was a photographer.”
While most photographers simply pop pictures, Modu captures life. His
stills breathe and tell a story every time they’re viewed. Throughout this veteran photojournalist’s pictorial path he has given Hip Hop heads a glimpse behind the images that have come to define the most prolific period of Rap music thus far. Chi is part of a very elite club of “shuttas”
who had an early eye for a powerful, young medium growing in cities and
settlements all over America with sights set on the world. Chi forged headlong into that movement and would eventually sit on the shoulders of fostering Rap giants. There’s a history behind every shot, and Chi tells it like it was with unique ocular insight. He’s respected in every industry, and his photographs are frequently sought for advertisements, television, movies and documentary films. In addition to being held in private collections, Chi’s work has also been licensed by Paramount, Viacom, Sony, and The London Times, as well as The New York Times.
The list of luminaries that Chi Modu has helped to immortalize reads like a virtual prediction of ‘Who’s destined to be Who’: Eazy E, Nas, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang Clan, Mike Tyson, DJ Grandmaster Flash, EPMD, and even a hungry young A&R named Sean Combs back when he was just “Puffy.” Chi got in on the culture’s ground floor when in 1991 he joined the team at the pioneering Source magazine. Chi would ultimately become the eye of the popular publication, landing thirty-four covers during his tenure – which ended in 1997 – far more
than any other photographer in the 22-year history of the brand.
HHW: Where are you from Chi?
Chi Modu: Well, I was born in Nigeria into the Biafran Civil War (July 6, 1967–January 15, 1970). There was beef between the Igbo and the non-Igbos. I’m one of five kids, and while my family was in Nigeria, my dad was here finishing out his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. So during the war he was scared to death. He didn’t know what was going on with his family. So my mom held it down with the “crew,” and then we joined him here in 1969.
HHW: Where did your family first settle once here in the states?
Chi Modu: We first moved to the middle of New Jersey, which is Princeton. From there we moved to Lawrenceville, where I grew up. You were very young when your family arrived. Do you recall the adjustment? I always grew up in the suburbs and in white neighborhoods, but the funny thing about it is, I never lived in the hood, but I always felt at home in the hood.
HHW: Why was that comfort so easily acquired?
Chi Modu: Because I’m African. I’m Nigerian, so it was easy for me to connect with my people even though I didn’t grow up right next to them. In my home it was like we lived on an island because we had a tradition in the house – we only spoke Igbo. It was my dad’s way of keeping the culture in us. So I still have the language, but if I speak it, I speak it with a
New Jersey accent – LOL!
HHW: Was your family supportive of your interests in Hip Hop culture?
Chi Modu: My household was very education-based. My dad worked at ETS (Educational Testing Service), which is in Princeton, NJ; they do all of the placement exams and SAT’s, so my dad’s one of the smartest people that you can ever meet. He’s like a math genius! But how he found out about my doing Hip Hop was when he saw The Source cover for EPMD. He was like, “You know what Chi? You need to stay right there. You’re at the right place. You’re involved in a movement.” I know a lot of folks don’t get that kind of support from their family. But my dad and my mom were very supportive, and these are people that heard Malcom X speak in Ghana when they were living there. So although I grew up in what I grew up in, I was still always very connected to my community.
HHW: So where’d you spend most of your time as a youth, and when and why did you decide you wanted to be a photographer?
Chi Modu: Pretty much in Lawrenceville, NJ, then I went off to Rutgers University and ‘did my time!’ I did economics, and after that I went into New York and worked at a camera store for about nine months or so, then this guy came in who had this real estate company around the corner, so I went and worked there for about another eight months or so doing administrative work – I hated it! I saw Mandela was freed from prison in South Africa and they did a ticker-tape parade in New York City for him, and I saw it on the back pages of the Daily News. I was like, “Ya’know, I’m supposed to be at these things. I’m not supposed to be sitting in the office. I need to be there to document and record it.” That was what made me want to start breaking out.
HHW: We both know this was before the days of digital, so you had to actually learn the full craft to be a pro. What were your first steps?
Chi Modu: I had a little dark room. I bought a used enlarger from the classifieds and taught myself how to print. I started making these black and white prints, and I’d do them in my bedroom, basically, at my brother’s place where I was staying briefly. So I brought the trays in and kinda taught myself how to print there.
HHW: What was your first photo gig, and how’d you get it?
Chi Modu: It was at the Amsterdam News in Harlem. I went in to meet with this guy Don Rojas, and Don was the managing editor at the time. He flipped through my homemade portfolio and said, “Alright kid, I can give you something to do.” I started bouncing around, covering Al Sharpton and all the issues of that day. That was around the Tawanna Brawley era.
HHW: Was the money good at the beginning?
Chi Modu: I didn’t get paid unless a photo ran. If the photo ran they’d give me $15 for it, so you can imagine, I’m spending all of this money on tokens and processing. By the time it was done I hadn’t made any money, but I got something into print. So that was the start of my career.
HHW: The Amsterdam News was the urban community’s old guard in terms of covering the issues and information that was relevant to us. But then something came along for the youth generation and the emerging sub-culture called Hip Hop – The Source. How’d you make that jump?
Chi Modu: At that time, Kevin Powell was writing at the Amsterdam News. He and I went to Rutgers together, so we actually knew each other from college. He mentioned this magazine called The Source that was bubblin’, and there was this woman, Dream Hampton, who was looking for somebody to do some photo work for them. Dream was actually a film major at NYU. What’s funny is, since she worked in film, they probably thought she knew photo, too. I went to The Source and met up with (David) Mays and (Jon) Shecter at the time. I started to shoot little things for them; I shot the Ed Lover & Dr. Dre cover at YO! MTV Raps, which was my first Source cover. After a while, all of the artists started figuring out that if they stood for my camera, they would end up in the magazine. So it happened kinda organically where I became the eye for the magazine.
HHW: How many of The Source’s covers did you shoot?
Chi Modu: During my run there I did about 34 covers for The Source, and I don’t think anyone else to this day can say that, and I haven’t done a cover since ’97. It was a unique time and a unique situation. I didn’t shoot Hip Hop to be cool or to hang around music. I looked at it as a responsibility. My feeling was that somebody from the community must document this stuff for it to stay in the community, so it was actually a mission of mine. I was trying to cover everybody, and not to get in the clubs necessarily, but to create an archive that would live, 30, 40, 50 years later. But in order to do that, you have to sacrifice money in the short run.
HHW: Was the money at The Source better than the Am News?
Chi Modu: It’s funny now, because if you flashback to the stuff I was doing then, like that Tupac picture where he’s smoking and tying his bandana to the front, that was during that tenure, but that picture’s licensed for way more money than that since, and I own the rights to all my images. So although I wasn’t getting paid much, I ended up owning the work. That was a business decision that I made, “Let me just take advantage of having this access, and have some control over the history and what’s done with it.”
HHW: How have you been able to affect the history?
Chi Modu: I’ve been very protective of a lot of these artists. I remember when Snoop was up on gun charges, and he was on the cover of Newsweek when they were trying to put him in jail – this was the early Snoop. I had pictures of him holding guns. At that age (18), he always had two loaded, semiautomatic 380 pistols with him. He was still riding in the streets with his boys. He was still ‘bangin’! So I had a slew of pictures of Snoop with guns, but I didn’t release one of them, and I knew I could’ve sold and licensed them to a lot of places, but I was like, “You know what? My responsibility is greater than whatever check I could collect in the short run,” so I didn’t release the photos. That’s always been my mentality because I have the utmost respect for the talent of the people that I work with – The utmost! That’s part of why we got along so well.
HHW: So many of the most powerful pictures to come out of Hip Hop’s defining decade (1990-2000) resulted from circumstances that you were able to create organically. Can you share one of those stories with us?
Chi Modu: I was shooting Snoop for the cover of Rap Pages magazine in 1993. Sheena Lester, the editor, asked me would I wanna shoot Snoop. I said, “Sure.” She didn’t buy me a plane ticket out to L.A., so I got a friend to get me a buddy-pass. I had like $60 to my name. My friend Chris Latimer was staying at The Mondrian (a swanky hotel in West Hollywood), so I called him and he said, “Sure, you can stay on my couch.” I said, “Cool, ‘cause I gotta do this shoot with Snoop.” He was like, “I’ll ride out with you.”Back then, Chris was pushing the AACA (African American College Alliance) hoodies. So I said, “No problem. I’ll put Snoop in one.” That ended up being the picture on the cover of Rap Pages, Snoop in the AACA hoodie.
HHW: Did you stay in contact with Snoop after that shoot?
Chi Modu: When it came time for his album, I got a call from the people out in L.A. saying, “Snoop wants you to do his album.” If you can flashback to that time, his album was heavily anticipated. It was really like the first big Hip Hop album, and it came after The Chronic, so everyone knew that Snoop was going to be a big deal. So I flew out to do his album work and we’ve been cool ever since. I don’t see Snoop much at all. Like a lot of people I shoot, I don’t see them, but when I run into them we’re cool. Their lives have gone down the paths that they’ve gone, but one thing that they always do remember is the person that photographed them before everybody else was photographing them because that’s such an important part of their careers. Snoop has done thousands of photo shoots since the two I’ve done with him, but I guarantee you he remembers the ones that we did together.
HHW: I remember seeing you on Youtube speaking about your first time meeting a young artist named Nas. Can you share that story, briefly?
Chi Modu: I remember seeing a 17-year-old Nas in Queensbridge before Illmatic came out. The first time I met him was when he did “Half Time” for Zebrahead. Then, when Illmatic came out I took a ride out to Queensbridge and he met me on the corner outside of Queensbridge projects. We went inside & upstairs and shot some pictures in the hallway and on the roof of the buildings. We shot in his bedroom with his homies and there were no parents around, just this buncha kids. I tell people this all the time, I went to college and that guy was smarter than me – I knew that right away! LOL! The way that guy had mastered the English language, I was extremely impressed. My feeling as a Black male was if we could harness and direct this energy in a positive way, it’d be over! Things would change. That’s where it was going, and then, BOOM - Pac’s outta there! BOOM - Biggie’s outta there! Everyone else that came after was too scared to say anything that mattered. It’s a shame because those guys were on their way to actually tackling substance, and they got
taken out before they could even get going.