Who Shot Ya?

From Generation Y-ers, who spend over $150 billion dollars each year and are today's driving force behind the booming popularity of hip hop, to forty-somethings who can recite every word of Rapper's Delight, 'Who Shot Ya?' has captured the hearts of an amazingly diverse audience - and the essence of the most popular music movement since rock and roll.

Nearly thirty years ago, Ernie Paniccioli began photographing the graffiti art throughout New York City as well as the young people creating it. Armed with a 35-millimeter camera, Paniccioli literally recorded the beginning salvos of hip hop, today the most dominant culture on the planet. Be it Grandmaster Flash at the Roxy, a summer block party in the Bronx, the fresh faces of Queen Latifah and Will Smith, the cocksure personas of Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and Eminem, or the regal grace of Lauryn Hill, Ernie Paniccioli has been there to showcase hip hop's evolution.

Culled from a vast archive, the approximately 200 images in 'Who Shot Ya?' represent the first major pictorial history of hip hop culture based around the work of one photographer.