Photography by Alex Fakso, Richard Reyes

Following up our preview in HHC Digital 005, we checked in with the men behind Home Grown: The Story Of UK Hip-Hop for a chat about the definitive domestic rap exhibition…

When did the idea for the exhibition first come about?
Andy Brydon (Project Manager and Curator): “It’s been on our Urbis radar for a long time but work in essence started in October 2008 with us initially looking at doing a Global hip-hop exhibition. However, getting into the story trying to tackle global hip-hop as a discreet subject is simply unrealistic and far too sprawling and complex for a single exhibition (unless it was to become extremely impressionistic and abstract).

“What did emerge from the early research was the incredible story of the UK scene and how under represented the true face of UK hip-hop has been over the years for a culture that has been so influential in all aspects of contemporary culture. By the time the clear direction was agreed on with Urbis and the board it was probably February 2009 – leaving a drastically tight nine months to get the exhibition together. The success of the show (in my opinion) is testament to the huge effort and dedication by all involved – particularly James McNally – working above and beyond at every stage.”

James McNally (Lead Curator): “For me, as far as my involvement’s concerned, it’s a culmination – or, hopefully, a plateau on the way – of what I started doing at HHC with all the Pioneers and Ancient Britain stuff. Basically, since I started on that route it was always my ambition to work on some kind of project that documents the entire history of British hip-hop – initially I thought it was going to be a book (which it still may one day be) but then Andy approached me and it ended up being an exhibition. So here I am, somewhat sooner than I expected. But I should say a huge thanks to HHC for indulging me all those years.”

Which part of the exhibition are you most proud of?
Brydon: “Hard to say – it works as a whole and every bit references others. I do think that the large scale photography has really brought the feel of the scenes over the years to life – and the design by Sheffield based design company Peter and Paul is stunning.

“Ultimately I’m most proud of the way we managed to get together such an ambitious project on such a small budget through the good will of people in the culture. Being a part of bringing that together makes me incredibly proud.”

McNally: “For me, I’m probably most proud of the earliest part of the exhibition, the bit that pre-dates my actual involvement in hip-hop. I’ve always been fascinated by things that have become kind of mythic, and that goes for culture generally, not just hip-hop. I’m a sucker for the stuff that’s spoken about in awed tones, but which nobody really knows about outside of the realistically small group of people who actually experienced it. And things are like that because they’ve never been documented, which is precisely the thing with the early years of hip-hop in the UK.

“I mean, if you know a bit about UK hip-hop history, places like Spats and the Language Lab exist in your imagination in this exalted place. You almost can’t even imagine what it would have been like to be there.

“So, a year ago I’d probably have given a finger tip for some pictures taken inside Spats, and then, if I’d found some, I’d have most likely ended up writing about twenty thousand words about them.

“Well, we found them. And we found the flyers. And we found the audio. And we found the Language Lab flyers, and we found the Whizz Kid at Acklam Hall poster, the Wild Bunch Vs Newtrament audio, and all this incredible stuff that people were generous enough to share with us specifically and the world more generally – it was like this feeding frenzy of a thousand little hip-hop nerd-outs for me. So, the proudest bit for me is that we’ve been able to make that early history a bit more concrete for people – and I hope that doesn’t ruin that mythic energy, because, to me, it’s fantastic.”

How important was Covent Garden in the development of UK hip-hop?
McNally: “Well, I wasn’t there so I don’t want to come like the all-seeing eye, but in all the interviews I’ve done with original London heads Covent Garden always comes up. It was hugely important in the London scene; the first city-wide focal point for hip-hop in the capital. Before that, hip-hop was in little clusters across the city, and a lot of people didn’t seem to know that it was going on in other parts of town. But by the last quarter of ‘83 people had started to congregate at Covent Garden, which gave the scene a focus and a momentum, and probably even more importantly an awareness of itself.

“All that was consolidated when Spats came along in ‘84, and between them, you could probably say they provided a venue for pretty much every significant early London hip-hop crew to cut their teeth. But you shouldn’t forget that UK hip-hop isn’t just London hip-hop. Hip-hop was also gestating in spots in cities across the country, from Manchester and Wolverhampton to Bristol and Cardiff.”

Brydon: “Covent Garden was pivotal as a meeting place for jams in the early-’80s and a far cry from the tourist centre it has become today. B-boys would regularly meet to see new moves and be seen by their peers in a time when the visual language of hip-hop was held by a few gatekeepers with access to US material from relatives and connections stateside and those lucky enough to have access to cutting edge tech like a VHS.

“However, it didn’t operate in isolation. On the other side of London around Ladbroke Grove there was a hugely vibrant hip-hop scene that was developing with ex-LA residents alongside London kids and in Bristol the Wild Bunch were operating their sound-system-driven warehouse parties that shaped a whole chapter of UK music history just as pockets of UK hip-hop began to emerge in other urban centres.”

Were there any artifacts that you really wanted to include but couldn’t track down?
Brydon: “The exhibition could have taken over the whole building even with what we had to hand. Having said that it would have been great to get access to Westwood’s collection which is thought to be vast – unfortunately in this instance he was too busy working to let us have access – although he was supportive of the project throughout.”

McNally: “I’ve got an APB out on so much specific hip-hop memorabilia, I could spend the rest of my life trying to reel it in. Seriously, as proud as I am of the exhibition, we scratched the surface of the sheen on the tip of the very top of a 98% submerged iceberg. I was determined to get the Duck Rocker – the beatbox from the cover of Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Duck Rock’ LP – but Malcolm McLaren told me he’d given all five originals away while touring the album.

“Then there was the original newspaper from the cover of London Posse’s ‘Gangster Chronicle’ – and you know I’d have been getting all sov’d up and re-enacting the cover if I’d found it! But Rodney wasn’t able to find it.

“I wanted to show the huge hydraulic hand that Afrika Bambaataa rose out of the stage on in the movie Electro Rock, and even tracked down the production designer. He kindly sent me some nice photos of it, but the hand itself is MIA. I could go on, but really I need a theme park and some Spielberg type money to scratch this particular itch.”

Are there any plans to develop the exhibition further?
Brydon: “Yes… watch this space.”

McNally: “There’s a certain amount of undivulgable plotting going on.”