KK Obi was working as a stylist in London when, in 2017, he made a zine. It was a personal project — intimate portraits of the creative men around him, some friends, some like brothers, all of whom had shaped and inspired him over a decade in the city. The zine was produced in collaboration with concept store LN-CC and Nataal magazine, and its pages featured a who’s who of young Black British talent: photographer Campbell Addy, i-D’s Ibrahim Kamara, NTS founder Femi Adeyemi, Royal Ballet soloist Eric Underwood. The title came from a literal moment in Obi’s life: these were his boys, his brothers, his friends.
Three years later, in May 2020, the zine became a magazine. Obi, now creative director, and Emmanuel Balogun, a writer who had worked across art, fashion, and academia, relaunched Boy.Brother.Friend as a biannual print publication and digital platform — 250-plus pages, three covers, with the loftier task of destabilising inherited notions of masculinity, race, gender, and sexuality through the lens of the African diaspora. The first issue, themed “Discipline,” was structured in five chapters — control, community, environment, family, post-visibility — and featured bell hooks affirmations threaded throughout, an interview with Damson Idris, a profile of Kenneth Ize, and work by Liz Johnson Artur, Mowalola, and the Association of Queer Ethnic Minorities.
Each subsequent issue has grown in ambition and geography. Issue five, themed “Ritual,” drew on the creativity of Berlin and ran to 366 pages, with shoots by Wolfgang Tillmans spanning Accra, Abidjan, and Lagos. Issue eight, themed “Faith,” was guest-edited and creatively directed by Riccardo Tisci, the former Givenchy and Burberry designer, who produced a 40-page fashion story featuring Michaela Coel. Obi now works between London and Lagos, and the publication has featured Telfar Clemens, Davido, Nicholas Daley, and dozens of emerging voices the establishment has not yet noticed — curators, casting directors, activists, people who are part of the ecosystem but rarely at the forefront visually.
Balogun once said he did not think the world needed another glossy magazine that does not really critique or inform. Boy.Brother.Friend is the opposite of that: a publication that starts with masculinity but insists it cannot be understood through men alone, that treats the diaspora not as a monolith but as a living, contested, endlessly creative space. Obi put it simply in an Interview conversation: there have been hundreds of years of artistic expression. It is time that art is purposeful.
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