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’Hip Hop Immortals" links the rich past of Stax with the music of today

By John Beifuss
beifuss@commercialappeal.com

The Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones -- subjects of previous photo exhibitions at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music -- were not only fans and followers but contemporaries of many of the musicians who worked at 926 E. McLemore. They recorded much of their most significant work at the same time Stax was creating its unparalleled catalog of classic soul and funk in the 1960s and early ’70s.

However, "Hip Hop Immortals" -- the photo exhibit that opens at the museum today -- links Stax with the sounds of the present. The connection already can be found in the music itself, thanks to rap stars such as Public Enemy and the Notorious B.I.G., who have made liberal use of samples from the work of such Stax artists as Rufus Thomas and Isaac Hayes.


"Hip Hop Immortals" opens tonight with a reception at the Stax Museum and continues through Halloween day. The exhibit -- on loan from New York’s Sock Bandit Productions -- includes 50 color and black-and-white photographs of hip-hop artists, including Tupac Shakur, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, Ice Cube and Jay-Z, among others.
The images -- which originally appeared as album covers and in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vibe and other glossy magazines -- represent the work of such celebrated fashion and music photographers as David LaChapelle and Christian Witkin. Even nonfans of rap music should be startled by these alternately gritty and glitzy portraits, which transform the music stars into icons of seduction and menace, or even mythological creatures. (The rapper known as Eve is posed in profile like a jazz Nefertiti; Eminem appears to have spines growing from his skull, like some genetic recombination of Pinhead and a Chia Pet.)

The exhibit comes to Memphis after being on display in Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Tokyo and, most recently, London.

For more information, visit soulsvilleusa.com or call 942-SOUL.