Sacha Jenkins
Sacha Jenkins, a pioneering hip-hop journalist, author, filmmaker and cultural historian, has died at the age of 54.
Jenkins passed away on Friday (May 23) at his home due to complications from multiple system atrophy, his wife, journalist and filmmaker Raquel Cepeda, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Throughout his multifaceted career as an author, producer, magazine founder and filmmaker, Jenkins was widely regarded as a key authority on hip-hop culture. Born in Philadelphia and raised in New York City, he moved to Queens in the late 1970s — a formative time when hip-hop, punk, graffiti and skateboarding were all rising cultural forces.
Jenkins was the son of Horace Byrd Jenkins III, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker who worked on 60 Minutes and Sesame Street. He began his own career by founding Graphic Scenes & X-plicit Language, an early magazine dedicated to graffiti art. Jenkins later co-founded the hip-hop newspaper Beat Down with childhood friend and fellow music journalist Elliott Wilson.
In 1994, Jenkins and Wilson launched the influential hip-hop and skateboarding publication Ego Trip. The magazine ran for 13 issues and spawned two acclaimed books: 1999’s Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists and 2002’s Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism! Alongside team members Jefferson “Chairman” Mao, Gabriel Alvarez and Brent Rollins, Ego Trip also branched into television, producing several shows for VH1, including 2007’s The (White) Rapper Show.
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Jenkins contributed his writing to publications like Spin, Rolling Stone and served as both music editor and writer-at-large at Vibe. He recently held the position of creative director at Mass Appeal, according to Rolling Stone.
As a filmmaker, Jenkins directed and produced a range of projects. His work includes Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues (2022), Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James (2021), Fresh Dressed (2015), All Up in the Biz (2023) and Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos (2024). His 2019 docuseries Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men earned him an Emmy nomination.
Jenkins is survived by his wife, Raquel Cepeda, and their two children.
Source: John Lamparski / Getty
Sacha Jenkins, a writer, director, producer and co-founder of the beloved Hip-Hop magazine ego trip, has passed away.
For Generation X and Millennial-aged Hip-Hop fans—and particularly Hip-Hop journalists—Jenkins was a titan. Born in Philadelphia, but raised in Queens, he was a co-founder of ego trip magazine along with fellow rap journalist Elliott Wilson in 1994. Although it only published 13 issues in four years, it spawned an influential brand that would feature books, ego trip’s Book of Rap Lists, and even a TV show, ego trip’s The White Rapper Show, on VH1.
As a journalist, his byline hit all the magazines of importance (XXL, The Source, Rolling Stone, Spin, et. al), interviewing a who’s who of subjects (he co-wrote Eminem’s biography, The Way I Am (2009)). Jenkins would go on to hold down a plethora of gigs that included Music Editor of Vibe magazine and creative director of Mass Appeal. A former graffiti writer, he launched the Piecebook series of titles that highlight graf from worldwide.
If you’ve watched many Hip-Hop documentaries, you inevitably would see his name pop up in the credits. He directed the doc series Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, (2019) which ran on Showtime (as did his Biz Markie doc All Up in the Biz), as well as Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues (2022) and Fresh Dressed (2015). And that’s only a small sampling of an indelible, culturally important body of work that Jenkins managed to leave behind before his untimely death.
Jenkins is survived by his wife, Raquel Cepeda, and their two children. A cause of death has not been shared at this time and the family asks for privacy.
As soon as word of Jenkins’ passing became public, many Hip-Hop figures (including some iconic graf artists) took to social media to pay homage to the legend. We’ve compiled some below.
Hip-Hop Wired sends its deepest condolences to Sascha Jenkins’ family and friends. Rest powerfully in peace.
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