Chi Modu

Christopher Chijioke "Chi" Modu (–2021) was a Nigerian-born American photographer known for his photos of various pioneering hip-hop music entertainers which "helped set the visual template for dozens of hip-hop stars."

His career as a documentarian in the 1990s, covering "the entirety of hip hop's golden age."

Early life Born in Arondizuogu, Nigeria, Modu was a child-immigrant It was in 1991, while employed by the Harlem-based New York Amsterdam News, and looking for freelance work that he began his three-decade association with The Source magazine.

He registered domain name ChiModu.com in 1999.

Career Modu introduced his use of the word uncategorized in 2013 via "enlarged photographs .. splashed across the facades of buildings in New York." as "Like graffiti, but legal."

When The New York Times reported in 2020 that eight of his photos had months before been auctioned by Sotheby's, they described it as reaping "the benefits of his work from the 90s." a 2016-published "coffee table photobook" containing some of Modu's work described its contents as "contemporary moments that later became historical." Some images he recorded in 1994 were used in 2012 by Rolling Stone magazine. Modu had been using a 1996 photo he took of The Notorious B.I.G. "Biggie" to sell Snowboards manufactured by a Swiss company. Copyright vs. "right to publicity."

It was claimed in one of the estate-vs-estate cases that in 2018 Modu had tried to increase his $3,000 per year licensing fee, but Modu's counterclaim, as stated in a legal filing, was that "the right of publicity has been abused."

Legacy Modu's legacy provides encouragement to other hypenated-Americans: his dual-success in photojournalism and documenting the birth and growth of hip-hop while staying "rooted and accessible to" those from whose midst he came. One family-oriented accomplishment is that, as a result of his activities, "Brooklyn-born Biggie, also known as Christopher Wallace" "live a very short life" that "it's about what you do with the time that you have."

A legacy by Modu to intellectual property owners is the added caselaw by which they are entitled to license their holdings. Two attempts by Modu regarding protecting what he considered his were not successful. The company and the software were acquired by Nielsen Media Research.

Personal His parents, Christopher and Clarice Modu, who brought their family to the United States due to war conditions in Biafra, returned to Nigeria over a decade later. Modu stayed in America and later married his wife, Sophia, who told The New York Times that cause of death was cancer. Modu had five siblings. and two children.

A resident of Jersey City, New Jersey, Modu died May 19, 2021, in Summit, New Jersey, at age 54.