Hmm. Like a child who has been through high-school, four years of college and about three years in the work force. That’s how long it’s been since seminal Hip-Hop film, Wild Style, first hit the film market. 25 years to be exact. To commemorate this glorious quarter of a century, Charlie Ahearn, the film’s director, gives us a big photography book of behind the scenes photos, artwork and commentary from the young New York City pariahs who were the originators of this pivotal movement.Wild Style The Sampler (Powerhouse) is a swell, fresh memento. The book does not merely regurgitate pictures from scenes from in the movie. No, the book features photos from the shooting of the film but that have been not widely published. It also includes commentary from the film’s main anchors like Lee Quinones, Busy Bee, Lady Pink, Fab 5 Freddy, and others, as they look back on the great era of pioneering Hip-Hop. The book also sashays photos of folks relatively unknown then but who are now either either really famous or literally immortal icons. There’s a picture from the set of Blondie’s “Rapture”of Jean-Michel Basquiat chilling in the background as well as a random polaroid of a girl named Angie B who would later would become neo-soul chanteuse Angie Stone. To put it plainly, floss with this book. Many serious Hip-Hop heads know Wild Style the movie, frontwards to backwards, in and out, but few of them have seen photos of Lee and Lady Pink on location at the amphitheater before shooting, original hand drawn storyboards, or write-ups about the whole Wild Style experience from Sacha Jenkins and others. This photo book makes Wild Style a whole new movie. Add the current pictures of Busy Bee rocking the crowd older, wiser, and with a hair full of dreads and Wild Style The Sampler is a bona fide collector’s item. Charlie Ahearn shows us how a little subculture that started in The Bronx is now the reason why cats are rhyming in Japanese and Swahili. On behalf of Hip-Hop’s eclectic offspring, Happy 25th birthday Wild Style!
