Live Concert Photography: DJ Premier and Friends at SummerStage, Betsy Head Park, Brownsville, Brooklyn 7/2/17

Live Concert Photography: DJ Premier and Friends at SummerStage Betsy Head Park Brownsville Brooklyn 7/2/17

So if you’ve been frequenting this site over the seven years of its history, you may recall that back in 1986 City Parks Foundation created SummerStage in the spirt of Central Park’s original purpose — to serve as a free, public resource to help culturally enrich the lives of New Yorkers through live concerts, dance performances, and other cultural events. And although it began with relatively humble beginnings at Central Park’s Naumberg Bandshell, the SummerStage has a long held reputation of an impressive and lengthy list of internationally renowned acts performing across a variety of genres, cultures and styles on their stages, including Sun Ra Arkestra, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, Big Daddy Kane, Seun Kuti, Femi Kuti, and countless others. Over the past two or three years or so, SummerStage’s organizers have ambitiously expanded the festival beyond Manhattan with shows hosted in parks, bandshells and makeshift stages across the city’s four other boroughs; in fact, interestingly enough, SummerStage has featured an increasingly number of diverse hip-hop acts across the city from Mobb Deep, Das EFX, EPMD, Pete Rock and CL Smooth and others — with the summer festival hosting the legendary DJ Premier on a couple of occasions.

Born Christopher Edward Martin, DJ Premier (a.k.a. Preem, Premo and Primo) is one of hip-hop’s legendary and most beloved DJs, producers and personalities — and while best known for as one-half of Gang Starr with Guru, Premier has leant his signature, New York, boom-bap influenced productions to a who’s who of hip-hop including Jay-Z, Jeru the Damaja, AZ, Big L, Big Daddy Kane, Bun B, Canibus, Common, D.I.T.C C., Dr. Dre, The Game, Joey Bada$$, KRS-One, Lord Finesse, Ludacris, M.O.P., Mos Def, Nas, Papoose, Rakim, Royce da 5’9″ (with whom he has also collaborated with in hip-hop duo Pryme), Snoop Dogg, The LOX, The Notorious B.I.G., Vinnie Paz, Kanye West, Immortal Technique, Xzhibit, Busta Rhymes and a lengthy list of others; but along with that Premier has branched out, producing the likes of Limp Bizkit and Christina Aguilera.

Last month, DJ Premier backed by members of renowned local, funk, soul and hip-hop collective The Lesson played SummerStage at Brownsville’s Betsty Head Park with a bunch of hip-hop’s finest, including M.O.P.’s Lil’ Fame for a rousing version of the Brownsville national anthem “Ante Up,” as well Nice ‘N’ Smooth, who joined the producer for their collaboration “Dwyck.” Check out photos from the show, below.