Influential journalist and filmmaker Sacha Jenkins has died. The Hollywood Reporter confirms that the cultural legend who co-founded nineties journal Ego Journey, died as a consequence of well being issues Could 23 at 54 years previous.
Jenkins’s reason behind demise was confirmed by his spouse, Raquel Cepeda. On the morning of Could 23, Jenkins suffered from a number of system atrophy, a progressive neurodegenerative dysfunction that impacts each the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system.
Jenkins, a Philadelphia native, constructed a protracted and numerous profession in journalism via his ardour for tradition and the humanities. His profession took off when he launched Graphic Scenes & Xplicit Language, credited as one of many very first magazines targeted on graffiti artwork.
Later in life, he partnered together with his longtime buddy Elliott Wilson, who would proceed to work in each journalism and tv, to start out the hip-hop newspaper Beat Down. Jenkins and Wilson’s subsequent main venture was the enduring Ego Journey, {a magazine} that blended hip-hop tradition with skateboarding.
Although he was initially born in Philadelphia, Jenkins himself was raised and formed in New York Metropolis. He selected to maneuver to Queens within the late Nineteen Seventies to place his finger to the heart beat of hip-hop, the place it was really taking off. Within the epicenter of the town, graffiti and skateboarding had been each rising as widespread mediums of expression.
Jenkins defined in a 2024 interview with Thought Era, “It was essential for me to be straight concerned, as a result of I be taught from hip-hop, from hardcore, from graffiti, no matter. Being a practitioner, being concerned, or understanding these cultures and subcultures has all the time been very germane to my evolution. Having that have actually helped me navigate the world at massive.”
Jenkins had a prolific artistic profession. In journalism, Jenkins started by writing underground zines, however continued to jot down and edit in main magazines resembling Vibe, Rolling Stone, and Spin. Most lately, he was the artistic director at Mass Attraction.
Through the years, he engaged in telling and poignant interviews with big-name artists from totally different musical backgrounds, wrote a number of books centering on graffiti, created an off-Broadway play, and directed a number of movies.
As a filmmaker, Jenkins was additionally a pressure within the trade. Most lately, he produced the documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” and nonetheless has a brand new movie on the best way referred to as Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos, which focuses on the lifetime of legendary Cro-Mags bassist and frontman.
Jenkins directed a number of notable movies, together with “Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James” in 2021, “Recent Dressed” in 2015—which takes a dive into the historical past of Hip-Hop style—”All Up within the Biz” in 2023, a documentary about Biz Markie, and a 2019 four-part sequence on the “Wu-Tang Clan, Of Mics and Males.” A few of Jenkins’s different credit embody: “Every thing’s Gonna Be All White,” “Round The Method,” “Supreme Group,” “Era Lifeless: The Strolling Lifeless Fan Documentary,” “You’re Watching Video Music Field,” “Rolling Like Thunder,”” Cypress Hill: Insane within the Mind,” “Metropolis Ladies Level Clean Interval.”
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