Art of Mo’ Wax: Brian Cross (B+)
Part of the appeal of a Mo’ Wax release, other than the music, is their amazing artwork, and the label became famous for their visually appealing packaging. This series will take a a brief look at some of the artists who worked with Mo’ Wax between 1992–2003.
Brain Cross (B+) is a photographer from Ireland who photographed several members of the Solesides Crew, including the cover of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…..
B+ grew up in Limerick, Ireland where he developed an early love of hip hop. Initially he studied painting, earning a degree from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1989, but he wanted to work with photography and spent most of his time working with his camera instead of painting.
In 1990 he left Ireland and moved to Los Angeles to study photography for his Masters at CalArts. It was in LA that B+ began photographing musicians, and specifically hip hop musicians after one of his professors at CalArts told him, “Why don’t you do some work with hip-hop? You’re always talking about it.”
One of his first projects was for the American author Mike Davis, as he explained:
“I wasn’t that convinced at first…Mike was editing a French magazine and wanted a photo essay to go with the essays that he had commissioned for the magazine, and asked me to do an essay about hip-hop in Los Angeles.”
After beginning the project, B+ began working for Urb Magazine and began putting together a book which was published in 1993 called It’s Not About a Salary… Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles,featuring photography and interviews focusing on LA’s Hip Hop culture.
While working on his book, B+ was introduced to Mike Nardone who then introduced him to DJ Shadow, as he would later explain, “when I was working on my book, I had a question. I had a sample and they were like, “Just call Shadow.” And I remember calling him and they came to LA not long after that. They needed photos so I did some photos.”
B+ photographed DJ Shadow and the Solesides Crew as they sat outside preparing Solesides Records’ first release in February 1993. Around this time Shadow had been meeting with James Lavelle who wanted to release Shadow’s work on his new label, Mo’ Wax.
Mo’ Wax released Shadow’s In/Flux / Hindsight at the end of 1993, and introduced Lavelle to the rest of the Solesides Crew. Releases from Blackalicious, Latyrx, and Lateef The Truth Speaker appeared on Mo’ Wax in the UK, and Solesides in the US, and many of the Soleside releases featured photography from B+.
The first album on Mo’ Wax to feature photography from B+ arrived in 1996, on Shadow’s debut album Endtroducing. In promotion of the album, B+ also directed a video for the single Midnight In A Perfect World, which sees Shadow and the Solesides Crew visiting Records, a Sacramento store where Shadow used to dig for samples. It was also where the Endtroducing artwork was photographed, and the cover is recreated in part of the video.
But outside of DJ Shadow and Solesides, B+ had only one other contribution to Mo’ Wax, for David Axelrod’s self-titled album released in 2001. It’s thanks to B+ this album was ever released.
Back in 1993, James Lavelle was meeting with DJ Shadow, who was listening to some David Axelrod. Lavelle was intrigued. Later in 1998, when Lavelle and Shadow were working on UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction album, they asked Axelrod to remix one of their songs, and were able to meet him. Then for Dazed & Confused’s 50th issue, Lavelle interviewed Axelrod, with B+ as the photographer.
David Axelrod and B+ became friends, and when Axelrod discovered a recording from an unreleased album of his, he played it to B+ first. Axelrod had been working on new music at the time, so wasn’t that interested in this old stuff, but when B+ heard it he was enthusiastic.
A tape was quickly made and sent to James Lavelle who promised to release it on Mo’ Wax. Recording sessions were arranged and these were photographed by B+, with some appearing as artwork for the self-titled album, Axelrod’s last.
In 2000, B+ released Keepintime: Talking Drums Whispering Vinyl, a film which told the story of several drummers such as Roy Porter, Earl Palmer, Paul Humphrey and James Gadson, whose breakbeats had been sampled in hip hop. After the film toured festivals, B+ put together a live performance featuring several of the musicians collaborating. This was then remixed as an album, which featured a contribution from DJ Shadow.
In 2017 he published his second book. Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed features photographs from his work with DJ Shadow, David Axelrod, and Blackalicious, as well as photos from outside of the hip hop world. That year he also released his most recent film Stony Hill to Addis, a short documentary on Damian Marley.
Since then B+ has continued to exhibit his photographs and create new music videos for Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley, and Ana Tijou. Across his career he has worked with The Pharcyde, Jurassic 5, Madlib, Flying Lotus, and Thundercat, as well as at the music magazines Rappages and Wax Poetics. But even with such an impressive CV, Endtroducing continues to be the work everyone wants to talk about, as the album continues to earn acclaim even now.
Speaking to Dazed in 2017, B+ reflected on Endtroducing and Mo’ Wax’s legacy of strong album covers and artwork:
“That’s the kind of fearlessness that James Lavelle and Josh (Davis aka DJ Shadow) were working off. Lavelle was a proper visionary. His idea was, everyone else is spending money making music videos to sell these objects and spending very little making the objects pristine and beautiful. His idea was like, let’s just save the money on the music videos and make amazing objects.”
External Links
An extended interview with B+ (which I helped edit)
