Andrew Kelley invited me to the studio the day I shot this pic of Sean Price in 2011. He was recording his verse on the Wu-Tang album Legendary Weapons. After recording that night, he lit up the assembled crew of rappers and industry folks with his lyrics and sense of humor. He spoke of the struggles of raising a teenager. When I shot this image, he was digging through a laptop to pull up an Alchemist-produced song from his upcoming album. He played it back for the room, rapping along to his own voice. You never forget meeting your idols.

In the shot, though it’s cropped, he’s wearing a Duck Down records baseball cap. Whole swaths of my personality have been formed by excessive listening to the Duck Down crew’s string of amazing records in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Price was one half of the duo Heltah Skeltah. But in the record industry shakeup of that time, the crew became less productive. Out of them all, Sean Price’s transformation into another type of artist, his ability to persevere and forge a new creative identity as a solo artist is something I’ve always had great admiration for.

Rest in Power.