He was born in Philadelphia, but young Sacha was mostly raised in Astoria, Queens and he grew up immersed in the creative explosion of NYC as hip-hop and punk were informing the city’s youth culture. Raised by a father who was a filmmaker (director Horace B. Jenkins, II) and a painter mother (artist Monart Renaud); Jenkins’ love of art was evident in his approach to the scene he was now immersed in. He recognized that he himself was part of hip-hop culture, and wanted his work to reflect that. Jenkins never presented himself as simply an observer, he was knee-deep in what was happening and he utilized his perspective to usher in a new brand of Black media.

When Jenkins and Haji Akhigbade started their Beat-Down newspaperin 1992, hip-hop journalism was just beginning to wield the full power of its voice. With mainstay The Source going national, Jenkins and Beat-Down were able to cultivate an audience that was a little more left-of-center and that sensibility carried over to Ego Trip. Teaming up with Elliott Wilson and Jeff “Chairman” Mao for the magazine, Jenkins blended humor with insightful commentary for journalism that was as insightful as it was irreverent. Over the course of a limited run, Ego Trip helped set a new standard for periodicals aimed at “urban” audiences; namely, it refuted the stereotypical boxes Black youth were being expected to squeeze into. And that outside-the-box mentality would inform the whole of Sacha Jenkins’ work over the next 30 years.