Life Force magazine

The magazine of the photo-essay

November/December 2023 issue

“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker

The Book of Rhyme & Reason

In the mid 1990s, filmmaker Peter Spirer embarked on a three-year project interviewing over 80 Hip-Hop artists who shaped one of the most important cultural movements of the 20th century. The result was Rhyme & Reason, the pioneering Hip-Hop documentary that captured the scene at this seminal moment, featuring many of the most influential rap artists and music makers of our time. Spirer’s recently unearthed photographic archive features pioneers such as KRS- ONE, CHUCK D, TUPAK SHAKUR, KURTIS BLOW, DR DRE, SALT-N-PEPA, Q- TIP, LL COOL J, LAUREN HILL, JAY-Z and so many more; candid shots documenting intimate, unguarded moments. Alongside directing and producing the documentary, Spirer shot accompanying stills using a medium format Rolleiflex camera: “The Rollei allowed me to capture some amazing moments: Puffy getting a trim in his office while doing three tasks at once, Biggie opening record plaques on his couch, Ice-T and Mack 10 hanging with their homies, Heavy D at the barber, playing pool. ... There were magical moments such as Redman and Erick Sermon freestyling on the mic to amazed onlookers at a block party in Newark and watching Wu-Tang Clan chop it up on the block in Staten Island before they exploded.”

by Peter Spirer