Sacha Jenkins, an impassioned journalist and documentary filmmaker devoted to portraying Black American culture from an insider’s perspective, passed away on May 23 at his home in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood. He was 53 years old.
His wife, journalist and filmmaker Raquel Cepeda-Jenkins, confirmed that he died from complications related to multiple system atrophy, a rare neurodegenerative disease.
Across various platforms—whether zines, documentaries, or satirical television—Jenkins fearlessly tackled race, aiming to capture the complexities and realities of the Black experience as understood by those living it.
He embodied the ethos of 'for us, by us,' becoming one of hip-hop’s most influential journalistic voices, not merely chronicling the culture but living it fully.
Raised primarily in Queens’ Astoria neighborhood, Jenkins was deeply involved in graffiti art during his youth. At just 16, he launched his zine Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language to provide an authentic viewpoint on graffiti culture. He later co-founded Beat-Down newspaper, focusing on hip-hop, and the bold, irreverent magazine Ego Trip, which described itself as "the arrogant voice of musical truth."
Jenkins served as music editor for Vibe magazine and contributed to Spin and Rolling Stone before transitioning to filmmaking to further explore stories of urban America.
In a 2022 interview, he emphasized the need for documentaries rooted in hip-hop culture, noting the genre’s rich storytelling tradition and the absence of such films until recently.
He became chief creative officer at Mass Appeal, a New York-based media company, in 2012. Three years later, he directed “Fresh Dressed,” a documentary tracing the evolution of urban and hip-hop fashion from antebellum Southern plantations to global runways, featuring commentary from Pharrell Williams, Sean Combs, and Vogue’s André Leon Talley.
Among his acclaimed works was the Emmy-nominated 2019 series “Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men,” a four-part documentary that humanized the Staten Island hip-hop group by revealing their determination, talents, vulnerabilities, and flaws.
His 2021 film, “Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James,” examined the complex life of the punk-funk icon known for hits like “Super Freak” and “Give It to Me Baby,” while also addressing his descent into criminal behavior. The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Showtime.
In 2022, Jenkins explored jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s inner racial conflicts in “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” drawing from Armstrong’s personal diaries and letters, narrated by rapper Nas. The film revealed the challenges Armstrong faced as a Black artist adored worldwide, yet often silent on race.
Jenkins’ work offered Black audiences a sense of homecoming, presenting stories created by Black filmmakers rather than through the lens of white directors. His approach contrasted with that of filmmakers like Ken Burns and Martin Scorsese, whose documentaries have been critiqued for perpetuating imbalances in how Black music and performers are represented.
Born on August 22, 1971, in Philadelphia, Sacha Sebastian Jenkins was the youngest child of Emmy-winning filmmaker Horace B. Jenkins and Haitian visual artist Monart Renaud.
After his parents separated, Jenkins’ family moved to Astoria, Queens, while his father relocated to Harlem. He graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School in 1990.
Growing up during hip-hop’s rise from the South Bronx to mainstream culture, Jenkins was immersed in the scene, recalling how they wrote graffiti, danced in the streets, rapped in stairwells, and plugged turntables into streetlamps.
While deeply involved in the graffiti community, Jenkins admitted he spent more time reflecting on and writing about graffiti than actively creating it. He started his zine with a $1,000 loan from his mother and sold approximately 5,000 copies of the first issue.
He later collaborated with Haji Akhigbade on Beat-Down newspaper but eventually felt the market did not need another hip-hop publication.
Instead, Jenkins teamed up with Elliott Wilson and Jeff Mao to launch Ego Trip magazine, which broadened its scope to include skateboarding and punk rock, reflecting the diverse interests of its audience beyond traditional genre boundaries.
In the late 1990s, Ego Trip expanded into books, including “Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism!,” which led to producing satirical VH1 television projects that critiqued media portrayals of people of color.
Jenkins also co-authored several books, notably collaborating with rapper Eminem on his 2008 memoir, “The Way I Am.”
He is survived by his wife, son Marceau, stepdaughter Djali Brown-Cepeda, and a grandson.
Jenkins’ candid perspectives on race were prominently featured in his 2022 Showtime docuseries, “Everything’s Gonna Be All White,” which examined America’s racial divide and included incisive commentary from various people of color.
The series addressed themes such as the concept of a Black Jesus, the January 6 Capitol insurrection, and the phenomenon Jenkins described as “white noise”—the internalized messaging from dominant white power structures experienced by people of color.
He described this “white noise” as a persistent, subtle distraction that can mislead people of color into making unconscious decisions, such as overlooking the importance of casting people of color authentically in films about their communities.
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