When I Was A Photographer - When Cryptogee Met The Fugees

I entered the world of photography by becoming an assistant to a friend who was a photographer at the time. Even though it hardly paid a penny throughout the two years that I did it, I still enjoyed it immensely.

I learned a lot about light, framing and all things that go to make a good picture, and I also got to meet some interesting people, some famous, some not so famous.

Fugee La

The Fugees were a huge hip-hop act in the 1990s, their first album sold gazillions of copies worldwide, and for a while you could not go anywhere without hering tracks of that album.

They were made up of Lauren Hill, Wycleff Jean, and Pras; both Lauren and Wycleff went onto have very successful solo careers and sold millions of records in their own right.

Lauryn

Lauryn hill was known as the most beautiful woman in hip-hop and captivated a generation with her sultry looks and her silky smooth voice.

She was once misquoted as saying that 'her music was not for white people', which kind of killed her career, which was unfair to say the least as she was not a racist but was portrayed as such by the 'shock jock' Howard Stern who decided to repeat unsubstantiated rumours that Hill had been racist in an MTV interview.

Wycleff

He was known as 'The Preacher's Son', for obvious reason, he was a martial artist and was really into his capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), of which he pulled some moves for us on the day.

The Shoot

The Fugees were around three hours late, however we expected this, all pop/rock stars always turned up late to shoots, and I think breaking this tradition would have made them totally square.

Anyway I had actually been out the night before and was a little bit hanging. There was a huge spread of food that had been put on and I had to ignore it, because of course it was laid on for the talent and not the help.

After around three hours or so, I told my friend that I just couldn't handle it anymore and I just had to eat! He advised that I eat from the edges so as not to spoil the pretty display of delicate sandwiches and various other snack types.

It was all I could do to breathe whilst stuffing bits of food into my mouth.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned round and there she was . . .

"Hi, I'm Lauryn."

Woah, pretty much the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen was standing in front of me and I had a face full of tuna sandwich, and grease all over my hands.

I quickly rubbed myself down and accepted her extended hand and shook it.

I swallowed just quickly enough to return her greeting.

Breakup

There was tension in the studio that day, Pras who you can just about see hiding behind Wycleff Jean, was being pretty moody.

We found out why a few weeks later, the Fugees split up and Pras was the only one who didn't have a glittering solo career to fall back on. Which when you hear his contribution to their songs (mostly saying, 'yeah, yeah'), you totally understood why. Perhaps him hiding in the background like that was his ironic statement about being slowly written out of the band.

note: I'm being a little unfair here, Pras's contribution to a lot of the Fugees songs was a lot more than that, however towards the end they did seem to write him out the picture.

Wycleff tried to make up for the moodiness in the room by being extra friendly and pulling various Capoeira moves for us, and all in all I remember having a great afternoon.

I'll leave you with their biggest hit, and my favourite Wycleff Jean tune . . .

Shots - Medium format polaroid Mamiya RZ67 F 16.5

Cryptogee