Hip-Hop photographer Sharief Ziyadat breaks down his favorite shots featuring Jay-Z, Drake, 50 Cent and more.
Billboard. 19 at the time. I jump off the bus with no money to go back home and introduce myself to Waah, saying I shoot The LOX all the time, even though it happened [every] so often. He invited me on their tour, and I’ve only been in school for a month, but I had to be there.”
Before he knew it, Ziyadat was snapping all sorts of content for the Ruff Ryders crew to the point that he became their go-to photographer. A love for the culture has always driven the Yonkers native to shoot, which only intensified after meeting DMX for the first time in a studio. “The first thing DMX tells me is ‘Do you love what you do?’ I told him, ‘Of course I do,’ and he said, ‘If you do, you’ll never have to chase money. It will chase you,'” Ziyadat recalls. “He was the biggest thing in music at the time, so hearing that was so motivating. The energy was so pure, I wanted to be a part of it all the time. When it clicked, I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do.
All the work and support he got from the Ruff Ryders put Ziyadat in a position to access other artists outside the label — and working with 50 Cent in particular helped “50 has been a blessing in my life because he was a big turning point for me getting into the ad campaign world,” he says. “Me being with Puff and all those guys was great for exposure, but the way 50 vouched for me and made things happen while I worked with him, no one else did.
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