Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.

I wanted to identify that the black experience is American experience.

The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry.

I'm very tomboy, and I'm inspired by hip hop artists.

I knew they were my people, but it didn't feel like it. I was pushing against any first-generation narrative, while all the people in that area were seemingly proud of it. Aunties wore salwars to go grocery shopping, and little kids had those silver or gold bangles we were all given at birth...We were different from them, and I was determined to keep us different. Every piece of gold jewelry ever given to me was hidden in my dresser; I refused to wear any of it, because it made me feel I was being marked as an Other. (I now wear all of it, sometimes at the same time, a signal to other Others that I'm an Other too.)

My photography is often a sociological look at American culture, and it's been very well published in the U.K.