On a picturesque morning in late July, the rapper Aminé is perched at a cobalt blue dining table in his airy Hollywood home. As he and three close collaborators fine-tune the artist’s upcoming setlists, one of his most important musical inspirations gazes out at them from a wall flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows: In a house brimming with playful primary colors, the most commanding sight is a grayscale portrait of Aminé’s mother.

The simple image is all the more striking because its source material was hardly hi-res: Aminé recalls seeing his mother’s small passport photo for the first time while visiting his grandparents’ house in Ethiopia several years ago; the poster-sized print now framed on his wall is an enlarged rendering of a picture he snapped with his iPhone before leaving the f

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