Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins

When did you first discover that you had a knack or a passion for being a storyteller? Okayplayer caught up with Sacha and we spoke about the power of storytelling, helming the Mass Appeal’s #HipHop50 initiative on Showtime, and the importance of documenting hip-hop culture. He directed the highly-acclaimed Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, a four-part doc series that covers 25 years of one the most iconic groups in hip-hop history and the 2021 documentary Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James detailing the life and times of the funk legend. In 2017, he directed Burn Motherfucker, Burn!, which chronicles the Los Angeles uprising of 1992. In 2012, he joined Mass Appeal brands as Chief Creative Officer, releasing Fresh Dressed, which tells the story of hip-hop fashion. Over the last decade, Jenkins adjusted the format of his storytelling - he zeroed in on documentaries. In 1994, Jenkins founded ego trip and would go on to produce two books that would become crowning achievements: ego trip’s Book of Rap Lists and ego trip’s Big Book of Racism. By age 20, he co-founded Beat Down, the first-ever hip-hop newspaper. As a teenager, he published his first magazine, Graphic Scenes & X-Plicit Language, a ‘zine about the graffiti subculture. Sacha Jenkins has spent his life documenting hip-hop. “ Joey Anuff, a producer at VH1, contacted us, telling us he was extremely interested in seeing if we could turn some of the content in the Big Book of Racism into a TV series,” Elliott Wilson says, original co-founder of ego trip magazine with Sacha Jenkins and currently editor-in-chief of hip-hop’s fastest growing magazine, XXL, “After doing a magazine and two successful books, it’s fine time for us to get another shot at the small screen.Photo Credit: Steven Ferdman/Getty Images We caught up with Sacha Jenkins and spoke about the power of storytelling, helming the Mass Appeal’s #HipHop50 initiative on Showtime, and the importance of documenting hip-hop culture. Nailing a place on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the Top 25 Funniest People in America, the crew of agit-pop journalists and publishers of the defunct, indie cult-hit mag, ego trip, are co-authors of ego trip’s Book of Rap Lists and ego trip’s Big Book of Racism!, the latter of which caught the attention of executives at VH1. Three one-hour shows, “Blackaphobia”, “Dude, Where’s My Ghetto Pass” and “In Race We Lust”, scheduled for late February are based on the vision of ego trip, a quintet of multi-cultural and racially-mixed mavericks: Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Chairman Mao, Gabriel Alvarez and Brent Rollins.

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins