HOUSTON RAP

Houston rap emerged from a network of neighborhoods—Fifth Ward, Third Ward, and South Park—where music, entrepreneurship, and local infrastructure developed largely outside national attention. Within these communities, artists, producers, and independent businessmen built a self-sustaining cultural economy with its own hierarchies, reputations, and modes of circulation.

I spent eight years alongside writer Lance Scott Walker documenting this world, working across homes, studios, neighborhoods, and informal social spaces. The photographs move beyond celebrity portraiture to include community members, independent operators, and lesser-known figures whose contributions shaped the culture alongside more visible artists—some of whom had largely disappeared from public view by the time this work was made.

The work documents Houston rap as a lived cultural system rooted in place, independence, and long-term community formation.


Houston Rap was published as a monograph by Sinecure Books in 2013.