Behind the Beat: Hip Hop Home Studios is a book by Raph (Rafael Rashid) where the home studios of twenty-eight notable American and British hip-hop producers are photographed (such as DJ Premier, J Dilla, Madlib, and DJ Shadow), along with brief descriptions of the producers and their studios. It was published in 2005 by Gingko Press.[1]
Background
Rafael Rashid runs Crookneck, a Melbourne-based record label, and the clothing labels Blank and Princess Tina, which he co-owns.[2] He originally photographed skateboarding, managing to get a few pictures published. He took on shooting home studios around 1995, when some of his friends began producing techno from their houses. Rashid was impressed with the quantity of gear they had in their apartments, saying:
I remember being blown away by that at the time, thinking I need to take a photo of this. But I wasn’t a photographer or anything. That was my earliest memory of a home studio. I’d always been interested in, and always known, producers.[3]
The first studio he photographed for the book was that of DJ Shadow, whom he contacted when he passed through his town. Shadow agreed to show Rashid his house for a shoot, and then introduced him to Dan the Automator.[3] Rashid explained that most of the people he met were through other people's relationships, saying: "Producers know producers, and that would keep rolling."[4]
Content
Behind the Beat contains 320 black-and-white and color photographs,[5] all shot using a square-format Hasselblad camera.[4]
