A Bronx “Family Album” from Hip-Hop’s Early Days

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Photo Booth A Bronx “Family Album” from Hip-Hop’s Early Days Ed Alvarez, left, posing with friends in homage to the song “Money (Dollar Bill Ya’ll).”Photographs by Ricky Flores Save this storySave this story Save this storySave this story Before production began on the 1984 film “Beat Street,” a semi-fictional drama about the early days of hip-hop and breaking in the South Bronx, a researcher on the production team visited Ricky Flores at his apartment. Flores was a young Puerto Rican photographer from the neighborhood who had been taking pictures of the teens he grew up with—his crew. The “Beat Street” team wanted to look at Flores’s photographs to make sure they got the look and feel of the culture right. “This is not a film about break dancing,” Harry Belafonte, who served as a producer, said. “It’s about the people who make up the hip-hop culture.” Having fun on the block. DJ Willie Dynamite. Breaking battles at 52 Park. Boogie and Carlos on the train. “The bastards,” Flores said, when I spoke with him recently. “They used my shit as source material, and all they gave me was a free subscription to The New Republic.” They gave him no credit,...

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