Updated: January 2003

"One can probably overplay the mysterious workings of that strung out spirit of the age, the zeitgeist. But occasionally a book or a movie or a song comes along whose influence springs up simultaneously in all kinds of unexpected places. 'Back in the Days' is that book." —Guy Trebay, The New York Times "Sunday Styles"

"The Arts: Jamel Shabazz. Back in the Days is a landmark photo book, all the more disarming for its unpretentiousness....Shabazz has captured urban culture, especially hip hop's infancy, at its most stylishly assured. His guileless subjects strut as upon a stage, light years from the self-important, and more materialistic, present. Keep it real." —Vibe, Hot 100 Issue

"'I didn't know the majority of the people I shot, but when I started, I was taking photos of everyone I knew. When I began to venture out of my neighborhood to other boroughs where I didn't know anyone. I saw the uniqueness in people. I pretty much studied their body language and I would compliment them and say, "I see greatness in you." Then I would show them my portfolio and they were open. It was just taking a picture and that's it; I made a point to stress the importance of education, staying off drugs and planning for the future. When I look at my book, I remember conversations with every one of them. I always left with something positive.'" —Jamel Shabazz tells The Source

"Biting, intensely sensual, and concerned, Shabazz invests his documentary work with a deeply ingrained conviction and affection for the diverse lifestyles of his community." —George Pitts, Vibe

"For those who got into hip-hop late in the game or who want to remind themselves of what their scene was like...Shabazz's work proves to be a previous resource." —Claude Grunitzky, Trace

"A singular voice in the tradition of American documentary photography, Jamel Shabazz' intimate, personal portraits record not just the faces of young African Americans growing up in New York, but also document the advent of the most influential American cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century. Jamel Shabazz' decisive moment was the birth of hip-hop culture." —Eddie Brannan, The Fader

"One of the country's most important hip-hop photographers doesn't take pictures of rappers. Since 1980, Jamel Shabazz has been capturing people in the act of reinventing themselves. In Shabazz's lens, the hip-hop revolution of the 1980s is a riot of new clothes, new styles, new ideas. His subjects look straight at the camera, striking poses—chin up, elbows out—that turn sidewalks into catwalks." —Kelefah Sanneh, Transition

"Back in the Days is just beautiful. The kids in it look cool in their satin jackets and matching puffy laces; they look really cool in that way kids today hardly ever do..." —Vogue

"Shabazz's book of photos, 'Back in the Days' has become a cult favorite of the nostalgic for the fashion innovation that preceded today's wholesale 'bling-bling' world." —Los Angeles Times, Style Section

"Fashion seems to be about endless recycling....So it's refreshing to come upon a style that's truly original. Flip through the pages of 'Back in the Days,' a new book of photography shot on the streets of New York, and you're transported back to the early '80s and the dawn of hip-hop culture." —"NPR: Weekend all Things Considered"

"There's a certain soundtrack to these pictures, coming out those big bad ghettoblasters caught in several of the photos: Tracks like 'Love is the Message' by Philly's own MFSB, music that bridged the transition from disco to the beginnings of hip hop. Or Run-DMC's 'Sucker M.C.s', which famous punchline 'Chillin' at a party in a b-boy stance' became a mental blueprint for many." —Lodown

"Back in the Days is a testament to his unstudied approach: His work effortlessly captures the raw joy of hip-hop culture in the 1980s. Boys in Kangols beam for the camera; girls in designer denim and big gold jewelry pose in subway cars; and pages upon pages are dedicated to oversized eyewear and thick-tongued Adidas." —Spin

“Shabazz shoots from the heart, on the front line....It was Shabazz’s first book, Back in the Days (released in 2001), that won critics over and made monograph gallery owners, fashion houses, international magazines, and rappers take note…Shabazz freeze framed the sartorial style of New York City in the ‘80’s, replete with proud Adidas-sporting B-boys and fly girls in sheepskin coats, while simultaneously revealing the subtext – the displacement and social turmoil experienced by Reagan-era urban communities.” —Vibe

"He's remembering the eighties, when the photographer, then in his early twenties. would cruise the streets of Brooklyn and midtown Manhattan, snapping pictures of teenagers decked out in Kangol hats and shearling coats. He wanted to capture their cool—to show their sense of style, their sense of self." —Details

"...the soul of black urban style at one of it's tastiest, coolest, most experimental moments to date." —Dutch

"Admittedly, the lens of nostalgia often makes us think the past was better, but you can't deny the individuality, authenticity, and confidence evident in the expressions, poses, and clothes of Shabazz's subjects—and in street styles back then. They're all much less evident on the logoed, labeled, and corporately owned sidewalks of today." —The National Post

"The surprise bestseller Back in the Days, with photos by Jamel Shabazz and an introduction by one of hip-hop's architects, Fab 5 Freddy, revisits those crowded Brooklyn street jams—a wild style mix of Kangol hats, Adidas shell-top sneakers, gold chains, and screaming primary colors." —Los Angeles Times, Pop Music Book Review

"On a rainy night in a Tribeca art gallery, with a party for a book of twenty-year-old hip-hop photos called Back in the Days, Adidas, the $5 billion colossus, is seeking to reinvent itself as small. Gamine models loiter next to the pictures—mostly taken in downtown Brooklyn's graffiti-drizzled sneaker-selling district, the Fulton Street Mall. They wear headphones. On their feet are the latest Adidas shoes, many of them revived from the dawn of rap, plucked from the company's archives....This is the new face of Adidas." —Details

"...in the early era presented here, the focus was never style for style's sake—it was about rebellion and survival....Free self-expression is communicated through hair, clothing, shoes, jewelry, and, most important posturing. An important examination of urban and youth culture..." —Library Journal

"Bust out the shell-toe 'didas, the Kangol cap and gold rope chains and ride the D train back to the old school with Back in the Days. These street shots of New York hip-hop culture in the early '80s—it's formative years—are the product of master-photographer Jamel Shabazz." —"Foreplay," Detour

"The sidewalk portraits he clicked throughout the '80s have recently been sewn together for the glossy history book, Back in the Days....Slap on your Cazals, pop into the Shabazz time machine and let's go 'back in time.'" —Complex

"Back in The Days...officially made the mesh baseball cap and dookie chain fly again." —Spin, "Best of 2002"

"...a depiction of 1980s Manhattan black youth fashion, style, and attitude...it's a yearbook of old-school flavor, before hip black dress was tagged 'urban' and exported to the suburbs. All the old hallmarks of the 1980s are here: short 'fros with razor parts, gold-capped teeth, short shorts (on men and women), loose-laced Adidas shoes, bucket hats, backwards-turned Kangols, layers of gold medallions and those square-framed glasses." —New York Press

"Jamel Shabazz has became one of our foremost chroniclers of urban culture, and his prescient images of the emergence of hip-hop in the 1980s—all Kangol caps and Cazal glasses—have just been published as Back in the Days." —Black Book

"...you'll get a glimpse of a culture that was on the brink of explosion. Before hip-hop became the mainstream and every company owned an "urban" brand, it was people like those pictured in this book that made the most of what they had—which back in those dates was pretty lean monetarily, but heavy on pride. The sincerity of the poses, the hardness (and smiles) on everyone's face, and just the raw style being rocked is so real..." —Transworld Stance

"...Shabazz manages to capture the essence of early hip-hop with keen visual perception, His approach, like photographer Nan Goldin, brought him intimately close to his subjects—the generation of b-boys and b-girls. With a daring and inventive eye, he captures some of the most beautiful images of an era."
—Black Issues

"Jamel Shabazz has been taking photos for a long-ass time—since the early '70s, to be exact. This book is a retrospective photo documentary of the different styles and scenes that emerged in and around NYC as hip-hop was evolving. Everyone knows what the corporations have been selling, this is where they got their ideas. Graffiti, break-dancing, gold chains, the freshest shoes—these cats (and kittens) were the coolest, and all subsequent trends have their originality to thank." —Strength

"It's a remarkable collection of photographs focused around the fashion of the old-school days of hip-hop....But more important than the fashions in Shabazz's photos are the people—the images capture a forgotten segment of the hip-hop generation." —Urb

"'A Fend bag and a bad attitude...' Back in the Days chronicles the most influential aspects of 80s Brooklyn style...through the lens of Red hook native Jamel Shabazz. Having generated one of the most enthusiastic followings for a photo book of recent years, Back sold out its original printing in record time. With a long-awaited second wave of copies being printed, hip-hop fanatics, skaters, and fashion-philes alike will line up to get their hands on this rich tome of modern history." —Gotham

"The culture has always been about style. Thumb through Back in the Days, and it's clear the hip-hop generation photographed by Jamel Shabazz in the 1980s was hooked on fashion. There are shearling jackets galore. Hoemboys strike B-boy stances in Pumas or Adidas. Necks are draped in the ultimate accessory of the decade: gold chains." —Boston Globe, pciked up by Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"...photos by Jamel Shabazz tracing the growth of hip-hop..." —The New York Times, "On the Town"

"This lovingly photographed look at the evolution of hip-hop—from break-dancing crews to graffiti artists and neighborhood MCs—takes the viewer on a tour of rap's stylish beginnings..." —"What's Hot," polo.com

"With an introduction by Fab 5 Freddy, this photographic journey to the heyday of hip-hop street style features incredible pictures of people whose genuine personal style puts makers of watered-down brand-name versions to shame." —V magazine

"...stylish, touching and timeless..." —Gear

"...captures the burgeoning NYC scene of the early '80s in all its spraypainted glory, from breakdancers and street rappers to graffiti artists and kids just stylin' and profilin'... Looking at it now, t's fascinating to realize...how much energy and pride is still relevant." —Nylon

"Brooklyn native Jamel Shabazz has become revered in the urban world for his book Back in the Days, a retrospective look at Old Skool Hip-Hop." —Mugshot

"Back before bling-bling—before the ostentatious era of Cristal and platinum—hip-hop was a phenomenon of the streets. Back in the Days, a book of photographs taken by Jamel Shabazz, captures that period in the early Eighties when hip-hop ruled the asphalt of New York. Shabazz' photos take the viewer back to the world of Frankie Crocker and Kool Moe Dee, Cazals and Adidas. Before the days of crack and AIDS, it was a world filled with surprising hope and vitality." —Playboy

"...Back in the Days effotlessly captures urban stlyes in this uniqe decade. Shabazz's subjects are poised between youth and maturity, and they confront the camera with intimate yet self-conscious attitude. As the title suggests, a strong sense of nostalgia is also present in the collection. The caps with upturned bills, denim cutoffs, wide shoelaces, and terrycloth headbands are remembered by many, while the New York cityscape—filled with graffiti-ridden subway cars and crumbling building—remind New Yorkers of a place that has all but vanished in recent years. In this way, Shabazz is as much an anthropologist as he is a photographer." —Flaunt

"Crack open photographer Jamel Shabazz's Back in the Days, his book of shots of everyday youth throughout New York during hip-hop's first wave, and it's all about chills up the spine.... Shabazz chronicles the faces of a black and Latino generation bubbling confidently between New York's depressed '70s and cracked-out late '80s, and building a pocket of art and attitude that would critically change global culture forever." —XLR8R

"As much as any self-aggrandizing rap lyric, the most entertaining photos here capture asn idealized self-image, a pose crafted for strangers' consumption, a mask and costume of cool....Every stance here is informed by poses seen in music and style magazines, but the faces that address Shabazz reveal a depth of self-awareness you don't get in standard issue copycats. These people are inventing the styles the glossies are glamorizing, just as their contemporaries are creating a musical form that will rival rock 'n' roll. The clothes are off the rack, but the poise can't be bought....Though the men and women in this book never got paid for the 'lifestyle' they invented, the fun they had in its creation sneaks off the page. Before the suburb-raised gangstas who believed their own hype, a lot of these city dwellers struck and aggressive posed...and smiled." —San Antonio Current

"Style, fashion, and cool poses in New York's thriving early hip-hop community...Don't be surprised if Back in the Days is used as a school text book one day. Respect." —Mass Appeal

“Last summer’s Back in the Days, a photography book of urban street fashion by Jamel Shabazz that will go into its fourth printing in May…shows the gritty origins of the looks that fill runways and clothing stores.” —New York Daily News

“It was the astonishingly confident street style of his subjects, the people and the way they were dressed when he came across them with his camera, that attracted the interest of the fashion community when the book was published. Shabazz had, in effect, captured the birth of hip-hop culture." —National Post

“His images convey the true spirit of the time while remaining timeless interpretations of self confidence and spirit. He shuns celebrities, but his subjects never look anonymous and their impromptu poses present a world of attitude with style." —Contact Toronto Photography Festival program

"Back in the days, Shabazz was out wandering the streets, exchanging a quart of orange juice for a game of chess, a quick pose and a snap, things were more innocent. Sure there were drugs, there was violence, there were guns and graffiti. But it was a long way away from the days of Christian Dior, Versace, and P-Diddy diamonds and fur. Back in the days, 'bling bling' was the noise your ghetto blaster made between stations." —The London Observer

"...collection of stylish teen portraits from the nascent era of Bronx hip-hop." —Village Voice

"Anyone who loves Hip Hop or wants to see what a raw gritty real archive of a street photographer looks like must check out this book. This books is like a visual Rakim saga.... We must take a vow to support our artists, not the safe, clean, sterile studio pimps, but the natural powerful raw artists grown out of our streets and struggles." —Ernie Paniccioli for Tools of War Newsletter

"Some of the flashbacks Mr. Reyes creates [in the film "Empire"], like the one introducing Victor's brother with the song 'White Lines,' have the nostalgic kick of 'Back in the Days,' the book of early hip-hop photographs." —The New York Times Film Review

"The urban youths and young adults pictured here love mugging for the camera. They're so full of joie de vivre that it's hard to believe so many of them fell to gang violence, drug addiction and AIDS, as Shabazz points out in his afterword. How sad. Yet Shabazz has done them a great service by capturing them in their prime and revealing the collective influence their lives had on popular culture. Thus, Back in the Days proves to be an important social document as well as a truly beautiful work of art." —Entertainment Today

"Back in the Days exists simultaneously as a visual record of street fashion and a sociological study of urban survival. Before 'ghetto gold,' fedora hats, and designer monogram styles graced the glossy pages of fashion magazines, pimps, hustlers, gang-bangers and fly girls rocked these items in full regalia.... In Jamel Shabazz's photographs, everyone's a star and they know it." —Y2G.com, the FUBU website

"These portraits of ordinary people on the streets of Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx reveal an eye attuned to everyday beauty....His photos form a part of the unofficial history of the city, combining the formality of the studio with the spontaneity and grittiness of the street." —Columbia News Service

"The photos are not so much posed as postured: beat boys and fly girls caught en route to some fantastic voyage, paused for the camera on their way into asphalt immortality. The photos tell a story of post-disco black America on the cusp of middle-class affluence but in the throes of Republican era cutbacks, rich in their ability to take aspects of mainstream objects of desire that denote class and status, and reinvent them. From sweat suits to elf boots, Back in the Days shows the evolution of our modern ghetto fabulosity." —africana.com

"Don't be suprised if you hear about a herd of fashion hounds, clad in Yamamoto kicks, riding the F train Thursday night to Red Hook—a former crack den of a Brooklyn neighborhood. Its all in the name of low-art at its coolest: Jamel Shabazz, the photographer who transported everyone to the old school days of hip-hop with Back in the Days." —fashionwindows.com

"This must have book documents the look and vibe of the original hip-hoppers from the streets of the 1980s. These images visually explain the definition of style and portray the epitome of cool. With introduction by Fab 5 Freddy and essay by Ernie Paniccioli, this book is an instant classic and already on it's second printing, so get your copy before these sell out." —fatbeats.com

""Last year's Back in the Days—a coffee table book of '80s-era street-style photos by Jamel Shabazz—continues to be a steady seller....'You get the older generation that can relate to it and say, "Yeah, that was my time",’ says Sara Rosen, an executive at powerHouse Books...'And you have all these young kids who are like, "I missed it. I've got to catch up.' “ —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Back in the Days documents the emerging hip-hop scene from 1980-1989--before it became what is today's billion dollar international industry." —bookla.com

"Young photographer Shabazz captured the look of self-styled dudes on the streets in the Eighties—long before hip hop became the global phenomenon it is today." —OK!

"The book brings back ghetto slice-of-life memories of brown-skinned shorties in designer jeans (Jordache and Tailords among the favorites), wearing ;eather bomber jackets and sheepskin coats, and proto-B-Boys clad in shell-top Adidas ('Look Ma, no shoelaces!'), Kangols (both the Bedford and the classic Snipe that LL made famous), and every color of Lee jean ever made." —Africana.com

"...photographs of kids experimenting with hip-hop fashion." —Allure

"When being fresh meant not looking like the next." —Yellow Rat Bastard

"...captures hip-hop's emergence from 1980-1989, with guys in Gazelle glasses, woolly Kangol caps and suede Pumas." —Philadelphia Style

More Press Coverage!!

Dutch GQ, Feature with Cover Photo
Elle, Feature with Interior Photo
OneWorld, 5 page Feature
Harper's Bazaar, Holiday Gift Guide
Deutsche ß, Included in Story on Adidas with Interior Photo