Yo! The Early Days Of Hip Hop 1982–84

Featured photograph—of rapper Darryl Matthews McDaniels, aka DMC of Run-DMC, and DJ Clive Campbell, aka Kool Herc, at the New Music Seminar in midtown Manhattan—is reproduced from Yo! The Early Days of Hip Hop 1982–84, French photographer Sophie Bramly's remarkable new collection of rarely-seen snapshots of the emcees, the deejays, the graffiti artists, break dancers and behind-the-scenes players of the early days of NYC hip hop. "Some people ended up being really close friends and they helped me meet others all throughout 1982," Bramley writes. "I was also religiously at the Roxy and every possible hip hop party at all times, but not taking as many photos as I did the following two years, only because no media cared about the hip hop scene at first. But most of my hip hop friends don’t recall me with a camera, I was a party girl in fishnets, so unless I was staging things they rarely noticed if I was with or without a camera."