[4] His career as a documentarian[2] included producing photos for The Source magazine[5] in the 1990s, covering "the entirety of hip hop's golden age.
"[13] Other locations included "Oslo, Lagos, Bangkok, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Barcelona and Dubai" and he described these[18] as "Like graffiti, but legal."
[12] A 2019[19] review of Tupac Shakur: Uncategorized, [20] a 2016-published "coffee table photobook"[21] containing some of Modu's work described its contents as "contemporary moments that later became historical.
"[24] Modu's legacy provides encouragement to other hypenated-Americans:[28] 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"[8] met his then-future wife and subsequent widow, Faith Evans.
[28] His 1996 image of a hip-hop star "with the World Trade Center behind him"[13] photographed across a body of water[28] was noted for its iconic value[11] once the bay between them was the only one of these four still in existence.
Regarding Modu's "I'm not from the hood, but they’re my people" a university Africana Studies co-director said that his works "provided a much-needed counternarrative" to the idea that "rappers were to be feared.
[9] 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.