Because hip-hop is not just the rapper holding the mic or the singer in the videos. It’s a culture that encompasses many, many occupations. Chronic presents the Founder of Eyejammie (New York's hottest hip-hop art gallery), Bill Adler.

Adler founded Eyejammie in March of 2003. "I love hip-hop and I love photography, and I thought it might be time for a gallery devoted to both.” Bill first got involved in rap and hip-hop as a journalist in 1980. By 1984, Russell Simmons hired him as Director of Publicity for Rush Artist Management and Def Jam Recordings. Since ’94, he formed his own public relations firm, Rhyme & Reason Media, and co-founded NuYo Records.

On February 19, Eyejammie premiered their latest exhibit, Work It! Images of Women in Hip-Hop. The show presents images of the most talented women ever to rock a mic, run a label, cut up a record, bomb a train, or spin on her neck. The ladies of Work It! include Roxanne Shante, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Aaliyah, Ashanti, Eve, Missy Elliott and Free among others.

Chronicmagazine.com: How was the opening?

Bill Adler: It was surprising. There were hundreds of people who showed up. It seemed like people were very, very pleased that a gallery would devote attention to women in hip-hop. It’s only 32 images, but it’s in sequence. It includes Sylvia Robinson in the office of Sugar Hill Records which goes back to 1982 and Lady Pink who’s a graffiti artist from back in the day. Then it goes through the eighties into the nineties and ends up in the present with Ashanti and Aaliyah, Eve, Lil’ Kim, and Missy Elliott. It’s not just emcees. We’ve got graffiti artists, deejays, executives, b-girls dancing. So, it represents a number of different ways that women have been involved in this idiom.

Chronicmagazine.com: Did any of the people who were actually in those pieces show up?

Bill Adler: To tell you the truth, no. I’ve been speaking to Roxanne Shante who lives in town. I thought she might show up, but she did not. Lady Pink came in [recently] and painted a mural for the show, but she didn’t make it either. But on the other hand, Fab 5 Freddy came in along with author Nelson George (Hip-Hop America) and Danyel Smith who has also written a novel recently. She was editor-in-chief at VIBE magazine. We sent an invitation to Free, co-host at 106 & Park. She didn’t make it, but mentioned it on the show.

Chronicmagazine.com: Where did the idea for the exhibit come from?

Bill Adler: I just met a woman recently – Isolde Brielmaier. She’s a young, black woman who recently graduated with a Ph.D. from [Columbia University]. She’s a freelance curator. A mutual friend introduced me to her back in December. I went to see a show that she curated and I liked it, I liked her. We began talking and she said, ‘Why don’t you do a show dedicated to women in hip-hop’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ I had some other ideas, but that seemed like a good idea to me.

Chronicmagazine.com: Most of the women who did the photography were women?

Bill Adler: Yeah. The majority of them. I think I have 12 photographers in here and 8 of them are women.

Chronicmagazine.com: Was that something that you purposely set out to do?

Bill Adler: I certainly did. I was as deliberate as I could. I definitely sought female photographers to be in this show. I wanted the photos to not just be of women, but by women as well.

Chronicmagazine.com: I know that you had photos of women through previous exhibits. How did you decide who to add to this exhibit to make it complete?

Bill Adler: I had to do a lot of searching, artist by artist. So, one of the great coups, as far as I’m concerned, is the photo of Sylvia Robinson in the office of Sugar Hill Records in 1982. When we decided to do the show, I thought to myself, ‘Sylvia was a very, very important and beloved woman in hip-hop even if she wasn’t a performer. She should be represented in the show. How do I get a photo?’ It turns out I’ve got files. I looked through my Sylvia Robinson file and I found a photo of her reproducing a copy of an English newspaper from 1982 and they gave a photo credit. Through a mutual friend, I was able to track down that photographer in England. I got a print sent from England to America for the show - and that was in 1982. I also got a great photo of Jazzy Joyce, the deejay, from a friend of mine, Ricky Powell. I see him all the time. He’s a dear friend and a great photographer. He showed me a contact sheet with one frame of Jazzy Joyce and he had never made a print. So, I had him dig out the film and I made a print for the first time. That photo was taken in 1987. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough current artists so I called my friend Al Pereira and got a beautiful picture of Ashanti and her sister and another picture of Eve. I called my friend Ronnie Wright. Ronnie has been shooting for 25 years or so. He also got me a picture of Ashanti and Eve as well as a picture of Free on the set of 106 & Park; real current and contemporary stuff.

Chronicmagazine.com: Is there something that you look for in a photo – a story you want to tell, an emotion you want to show?

Bill Adler: Yeah. It’s a combination of things. I want it to be a beautiful photo first and I want it to fit the concept of the show secondly. It helps if there’s some celebrity value, but that’s not necessary. For example, I’ve got photos from a photographer named Coreen Simpson. She’s an older black woman. She’s been shooting for an awfully long time. I put three of her photos in and not one of them is of someone famous. It’s of kids from the community who are as much hip-hop as anyone who ever picked up a mic. It’s a mistake to separate the celebrity from the community in your mind. They may live in Hollywood now, but they emerged from a particular community to begin with and that’s where they got a lot of their power from. Hip-hop doesn’t come out of thin air. Hip-hop is a product of a number of black communities. So, some of those [photos] from the community had to go in the show even though none of those kids have any celebrity value.

Chronicmagazine.com: Did you take any of the photos?

Bill Adler: No, but I was tempted. I just run the gallery, so I did not take any photos. That’s just not my background. I’ve done a whole variety of things. I’ve written books. I was a journalist. I was a deejay. I was a publicist for years and years. I ran a record label. I’ve taken photos for fun, but never for profit.

Chronicmagazine.com: Where did the whole idea of the gallery come from? You’ve done so many things in the entertainment industry, but so far they’ve all been so different.

Bill Adler: The one thing that unifies everything that I’ve done is the love of music. Even though I’ve done all these various things, they’re all devoted to the love of music. I think younger people image that if they go to school, they’re going to come out and know what they’re going to do; their life course will be set. That’s not always true…If you would have asked me twenty-five years ago if I was going to end up running an art gallery in New York, I would have looked at you like you had two heads. There’s no predicting it. Looking back, one thing that's always unified everything was this love of music. It’s a photo gallery, but it’s a photo gallery dedicated to musicians.

Chronicmagazine.com: I can attest to that. My background is very different from what I do now…but my passion outweighed what I had chosen to do.

Bill Adler: It’s a beautiful thing to have passion. Not everyone has passion which is really a terrible thing. It’s very sad, but I’ll encourage anyone who has some passion to follow your dreams. There’s nothing better in life than to be able to work at a job that you love.

Chronicmagazine.com: Why do you think the gallery is needed right now?

Bill Adler: I don’t know that it’s needed. It gives me some personal satisfaction and I believe that it’s touching a chord. I have fans, people in the community and people in the press who have told me that it’s a wonderful thing. I don’t know if the world would be a different place if I hadn’t created it, but I will say that what I do is treat the culture with respect. I think of it in terms of art and history. It’s not the usual way to think of hip-hop. Mostly people just think of it in terms of commerce. It’s important as commerce, but to prize it as something more is unusual.

Chronicmagazine.com: What attracted you to the culture?

Bill Adler: I feel like everyone comes up in the culture. I’m not black, but like most Americans, I grew up unknowingly in black culture. There’s no way for you to love American popular music without being a fan of black culture - even if you can’t name it. African-Americans have been way too influential in American pop culture for Americans of any stripe not to be affected by black culture. With regard to hip-hop, I was writing about music for the Boston Herald when “Rappers Delight” came out in the fall of 1979 and then Kurtis Blow came out with “Christmas Rappin’.” Those were the first two big rap hits. I loved them. They didn’t seem so strange to me. They were amusing and they had good beats, but they didn’t seem so odd to me. I know a lot of folks were put off by it. I moved to New York in 1980 and I continued to write and later did a story on Kurtis Blow. The thing about hip-hop that really hasn’t changed over all these years is that it’s really fun. People outside of it don’t understand. All you have to do is go to a show or listen to the radio or even look at MTV. It’s not all fun all the time. It seems like a lot of the times, the imagery degrades women or it’s about violence. The popular notion is that those qualities define everything under the name of hip-hop. I don’t believe that’s true. I still think the overall vibe is fun. It’s real simple to feel it and it never fails to move me. That’s why it’s so crazy popular. All sorts of people all over the world have glommed onto this thing called hip-hop. At the bottom of it, I think that’s what it’s for. It’s nothing mysterious about. People like to have fun.

Chronicmagazine.com: What’s the one thing you want people to take from the gallery?

Bill Adler: Just to understand that whatever is going on at this very moment is not everything that’s happened under the name of hip-hop. In fact, there is a history and it’s an exciting history. It’s a glorious history. It’s a rich history. It’s an evolving history. If they took that notion with them, that would be a very positive thing. Thinking of things in historical terms in America is never encouraged. Americans tend to not like history - even their own history. I’ve always understood that history is very important.


Eyejammie is the only fine arts gallery in New York dedicated to the art and photography of hip-hop. It is located in New York at 516 W.25th. The exhibit, Work It! Images of Women in Hip-Hop, is currently open for viewing now through March 27.



Special thanks to Bill Adler for making the time.