Table of contents for Issue 79: Spring/Summer 2023 in Huck

When you start a new issue of a magazine you sit there, staring at the many blank pages, trying to think about how you’re going to make something unique. Something that follows a theme and pushes the story of the publication forward, both design-wise and with the words and things it features. When you think you’ve got a theme you try to create stories that fit around it somehow. And then, about halfway through, you decide to change everything. You tweak your ideas and then things start to magically fall into place. Happens every single time. The magazine you send to print is never the one you started out making. It’s better. This one definitely is. Everyone in this issue has taken control of their narrative. Mia Khalifa is our…

We are all Mia Khalifa. And not just in the tongue-in-cheek way that the world’s arguably most notorious brown woman references, in the bio of her 27.6 million-strong Instagram account — (“Are you even a brown girl with glasses if you haven’t been called Mia Khalifa?”). IT WASN’T ENTIRELY WHAT I was expecting, when I first logged onto a Zoom call with the Lebanese-born, US-raised 30-year-old, but two minutes into the conversation with the barefaced Mia, sitting in a tan silk shirt in front of a colour-coordinated bookshelf in her Miami home, it felt like we had long been friends. It wasn’t just because I — like Mia — am also a Middle Eastern woman in her early 30s who moved to the ‘West’ at the age of eight, one…

The British-Pakistani DJ/producer, now based in London and whose real name is Ahad Elley, has a distinctly kaleidoscopic sound — seamlessly fusing genres from far-reaching corners of the globe. From D’n’B to bhangra, to grime and Kuduro, it’s made him a firm favourite on festival line-ups and club nights internationally, while his work behind the scenes championing the depth of South Asian talent is helping to change the face of the UK’s music industry. Ahad, who moved to London from Pakistan when he was 13, cut his teeth running a club night while studying for a chemistry degree at the University of Surrey (Ahad’s parents had wanted him to be a doctor, but he had other plans). Shortly after that time, he started releasing some of his own tracks on…

Musician, curator, but foremost — a skateboarder, Helena Long has had to ease off the gas lately. “I’ve always been slightly distracted,” she says, smiling, gazing upwards for a moment as if watching her thoughts tick over, on a video call from her London home. “Skateboarding was the main focal point but now I have to shift it. With drumming, I couldn’t play for the first couple of months because my leg wasn’t allowed to bend.” SHE’S REFERRING TO HAVING KNEE surgery, the cause for which began after jarring it on a cold spring day in 2021. “I rested it for a couple of weeks, iced it, all that jazz,” she explains, but it continued to play up. Bouncing between physiotherapists, accumulating a comical amount of resistance bands along the…

Chuck Treece applies a punk rock mentality to everything he does, from his illustrious career as a pioneering, Black pro-skater, to playing bass and drums with seminal hardcore pioneers Bad Brains, and forming his own skate rock group, McRad. 1984, USA. VANESSA WILLIAMS BECAME the first African American crowned Miss America. Michael Jackson was the first solo artist to win eight Grammy’s in one night. And Chuck Treece, already the first Black skater from Philly to be sponsored, toasted his birthday month that year by becoming the first African American skateboarder on the cover of Thrasher Magazine. At the same time, his skate rock group McRad dropped their debut EP, Dominant Force — containing some of the most anthemic skate music ever written. Fast forward to the present, and when…

When Bongeziwe Mabandla released his third album, iimini, a day after South Africa went into full lockdown, it was a blessing in disguise. “I’m glad I did that, because people could listen to it without a lot of distractions,” says the award-winning Eastern Cape province-born musician, known for his raw lyrics and personal subject matter, when we link up in Johannesburg on a hot March afternoon — initially at a secluded coffee shop, then at his house later in the day. “People were at home, not doing much. And the album was about love and connection, exactly what people were kind of lacking at that time.” That experience altered his approach towards life, and he started seeing a clinical psychologist, a process he says has helped him understand himself. We’re…

WHEN IRISH PHOTOGRAPHER AND DIRECTOR, Niall O’Brien and his girlfriend Nikki moved to Silicon Valley for a three-month work secondment, they found themselves in a nondescript area called Campbell. They were living in a big, soulless, empty apartment building where Niall would ride his bike around the apartment building because there was nothing else to do while his girlfriend was at work and traveling. “The most exciting thing I had was running to Whole Foods,” half laughs Niall. His salvation from boredom was Bascom Avenue — a six-mile-long road that crosses through three cities; Los Gatos, Campbell and San Jose. The distance it covered and the juxtaposition of well-off highly paid tech workers alongside huge numbers of homeless people was something he couldn’t ignore. “I just walked up and down…

LUCA ALBRISI’S LATEST FILM PROJECT began with a couple of false starts. He originally planned to film his movie about a group of friends crossing the Dolomites on skis and splitboards (snowboards that split in two to act as touring skis) in 2019 but there wasn’t enough snow. A problem he describes as increasingly common due to rising temperatures caused by the climate crisis. Then, in 2020, just before they were about to set off, the pandemic struck, closing ski resorts, and forcing them, like the rest of the world, to shelter in place. A year later, the resorts were still closed but the snow was good, and they could finally film their trip. Luca’s initial premise had been to show the contrast between quiet, pristine valleys shaped by nature…

How did you get into photography and which photographers influenced you when you were starting? I got into photography via music, specifically hip-hop. I would also say that my grandmother influenced me, something I did not fully realise until her recent death. What I have learned over the years is it’s perfectly okay NOT to have gained influence from those who do the same as you. Influences come from all over and it is up to you to decide how to process them. Do you have different personalities for when you’re shooting different things. i.e. does a different Mel mindset turn up to shoot celebrities, compared to protests? Good question, I have never been asked this before. The answer is yes — when shooting celebs during a photo shoot I…