NWA, Malibu, 1989. Hip hop’s in full swing, and Esquire calls me to shoot NWA. I’d heard about these guys. They tried to intimidate me - but I’m hard to intimidate. I knew most people would take them to Compton and shoot them against a graffiti wall, so I took them to Malibu.It was incongruous that these guys, all dressed up with their clean kicks and everything, were standing in the sand. There were all these girls in bikinis, and I shot them standing there with the ocean behind them and all these girls laying in the sand in the foreground, out of focus. Dre’s phone rings - a massive, 1989-style brick. He starts talking, while the others keep posing. In the corner of my eye I see a surfer coming out of the water with his board, and it all came together.
