The hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest on Seventh Avenue and 28th Street, 1990.

*Top,* the hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa on Avenue B, 1986; *above,* the rapper LL Cool J and his posse outside Jones Diner on Lafayette Street, 1987.

The hip-hop duo Gang Starr on Stanton Street, 1990.

Keith Haring in his studio, on Broadway and Third Street, 1985.

The rapper Roxanne Shanté on Lafayette and East Fourth Streets, 1987.

The artist André Charles in front of his mural commemorating the death of Tupac, at 143 Houston Street, 1996.

Basketball players Julien and Damien on Sixth Avenue and Houston Street, 1996.

The hip-hop group the Afros, on Broadway and Houston Street, 1990.

*Top,* the hip-hop group Public Enemy outside Def Jam Recordings at 298 Elizabeth Street, 1988; *above,* KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock, of the hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions (BDP), outside the Ninth Precinct police station, on East Fifth Street, 1987.

The hip-hop group Naughty Kreations R Unified (NKRU) on Lafayette and Bleecker Streets, 1992.

An advice sign for surviving New York, in the window of Mott’s Deli on Avenue B, 1986.

The hip-hop duo Eric B. & Rakim on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones Streets, 1987.

The freestyle singer Noel Pagan on East Second Street, 1987.

How Hip-Hop Was Made

After photographing London’s nascent punk scene, Janette Beckman moved to New York to chronicle hip-hop’s early days and founding artists—A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J among them

By Dana Brown

Photographs by Janette Beckman

After studying photography at Central Saint Martins and the London College of Communication, Janette Beckman, like any young photographer set loose in the world, needed something to take pictures of.

As it turned out, the London-born Beckman didn’t have to go far. It was the mid-1970s, and she happened to have found herself in what would become one of the most cinematic cultural moments of the last half-century: London’s burgeoning punk scene. The city’s streets and its snarling inhabitants became her canvas and subjects.