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Renowned hip-hop journalist and cultural historian, Sacha Jenkins, has died at 54. His wife, Raquel Cepeda, told The Hollywood Reporter that he died on Friday, May 23, due to complications from multiple system atrophy. The couple has two children.
Jenkins was a pioneer in the field of hip-hop journalism and was known for his incredible insight and ambition towards the industry. He co-founded the Ego Trip magazine, which ran for 13 issues, and also formed the foundation for multiple books.
He also helped produce and make multiple documentaries, TV shows, and movies.
Sacha Jenkins was born in Philadelphia but later moved to Queens, where he got engrossed in hip-hop culture with music, skateboarding, and more.
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He also created Beat Down, which is widely considered the first-ever hip-hop newspaper.
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Sacha Jenkins created Beat Down, Ego Trip, and more
Jenkins' father, incidentally, was Horace Bryd Jenkins III, who was a filmmaker and worked on the likes of Sesame Street.
Inspired by his work and also the surroundings he grew up in, Jenkins first published Graphic Scenes & Xplicit Language, a graffiti zine, in 1988.
This zine ran for four issues before Sacha Jenkins created Beat Down. He was the editor-in-chief at the newspaper along with Haji Akhigbade.
He continued his work in graffiti by working with Videograf Productions, which focused on graffiti culture.
Then, in 1994, Jenkins co-founded Ego Trip magazine with Elliott Wilson. In an interview with Bloomberg in 2023, he said (via Variety):
“I wanted it to be more of a reflection of my life. I like skateboarding, I like rock, I like hip-hop… I wanted something that was a little more contemporary to how I lived at that point.”
The magazine ran for 13 issues and eventually also led to books Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists and Ego Trip’s Book of Racism. The magazine and the books then led to the production of VH1 shows Ego Trip’s The White Rapper Show and Miss Rap Supreme.
Jenkins also co-authored Eminem's biography The Way I Am in 2008.
Sacha Jenkins in filmmaking and production
Ego Trip collapsed after 13 issues, but Sacha Jenkins then continued in the TV and filmmaking space. He was the executive producer of the VH1 series 50 Cent: The Origin of Me.
He became a partner at Decon in 2012, which is an ad agency and a record label. In 2015, his first feature-length documentary, Freshly Dressed, featured at the Sundance Festival.
In an interview with Variety in 2023, Jenkins said about his filmmaking career:
“They all had the same story, just different generations: They’re addressing America through their art. And until America changes, hip-hop is going to be what it is — a way for many of us to take ownership of our identity. And I think that’s threatening to some people, but at the same time, America makes a lot of money from hip-hop but it doesn’t really honor it. But hip-hop is not black history — it’s American history.”
In 2022, Sacha Jenkins established a boutique production company named Resurgent Pictures with his wife, Raquel Cepeda.
They produced multiple documentaries, either independently or in collaboration. They produced The Walking Dead: Generation Dead, and much more.
