The Moment: The Original Roots Crew

The Original Roots Crew

New York, 1994

This was my second time photographing The Roots for an assignment; I was shooting on spec for Urb Magazine.

Prior to this moment, I had photographed The Roots live in concert at Giant Step and shot their publicity picture for Geffen Records, for the album “Do You Want More.”

The day I shot this photo, we chose a park near Midtown Manhattan. I did not have a set image I wanted to capture in mind.

After meeting The Roots at the park, we started out with some shots near a playground area. Then, we moved and sat on large cement step or bleachers. Questlove, Black Thought, and Malik B. flowed in their space. I didn’t direct them. I just want to capture them in their essence.

Before wrapping up, we also took more posed shot using wide angle lens and filters for effects.

Urb Magazine used one image from that shoot to accompany an article on The Roots debut album, and the rest were archived until now.

The archival print of this image is available for purchase in Signature Series 2.0