We shoot some hoops with Normski and Eddie Otchere.
The Wildstyles exhibition of hip-hop photography launched at the PYMCA gallery last year, featuring images of rappers like Kool Keith coming to the UK for the first time and making thousands of young Londoners invade Dingwalls, as well as classic shots of British MCs like Silver Bullet. When a second run was announced this month, along with a competition designed to get kids to stop playing so much PS3 and take some photos instead, we actually started paying attention and decided to talk to two of the main photographers involved, accidental broadcasting pioneer Normski and Eddie Otchere, who has toured with the Wu Tang Clan and curated a wing of the National Portrait Gallery.
But instead of just asking, 'who wants to look at photos of rappers we don't really remember?' and 'does anyone actually bother to enter competitions?' we had the idea of settling such questions in the only way that seemed right: over a game straight-up, two-on-two, half-court basketball. Actually, we’re not even very good at basketball, but going out on a nice day to chat and shoot some hoops seemed better than sitting over a dictaphone and a cup of tea at a café.
So there we are on the asphalt, and Normski immediately starts complaining about a catalogue of minor injuries that mean we have to go really easy on him. We decide to kick off by playing a quick point, and it turns out the man’s a hustler, because he's putting about ten times more into it than anyone else, running like a pro and can actually jump.
Spoonfed: If you're finished tiring us out before we've hardly started, could you explain why you’ve chosen to look back at this era?
Normski: Any time's good to look back at some of the most important memories of our lifetime, but it's a big twenty years since 1988, which was a really poignant time for hip-hop. It really surfaced in England in '87, when the Americans came over, and by '88 we had Yo! MTV Raps on telly.
[At this point Normski actually throws the ball to Eddie so he can give us his thoughts. Maybe this isn’t a completely stupid setup for an interview.]
Eddie Otchere: Photography doesn't become important as a medium until ten, twenty years later, when you can really judge that, yeah, Kool Moe Dee was influential, LL Cool J was influential. Twenty years later it all makes sense. I look at you kids and think, we invented it, you’re living it.
Spoonfed: The other thing that 1988 means to people is the acid house explosion. The show you presented a couple of years later, Dance Energy, contains some amazing scenes of young people going crazy for rave acts in the BBC studio.
Normski: It’s because you've got all this energy when you're young and you need some way to let go. Dance Energy turned up and for the first time in the history of British culture a television production was being put together that would incorporate and star the audience. So much so that it had me, a presenter who wasn’t even TV-trained or an actor: a real person presenting television. Now it’s the big thing but back then it was the start of something new.
Eddie: Back then I was at Hammersmith and West London College. Everyone would be bopping down to the BBC studios around the corner at lunchtime.
Normski: On Dance Energy people felt like, 'this is my show'. To this day people come up to me and tell me stuff about that show. I can’t remember anything about Popworld.
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Spoonfed: So is there anyone documenting what's going on nowadays, like you guys did with photography and TV?
Eddie: I think it is happening, but in a digital medium. It's virtual, so there's a limit to what it can do and how seriously you can take it, because without it being an object you’ll never take it seriously.
Normski: [hanging from the hoop while we shoot points over his head] The difference is you actually had to go to an event. Now people think: I'll look it up on the net. You need to be at the front row of the gig like we were, with film gear. Digital technology has become so accessible that there’s a serious lack of passion for the documentation of things. There's a lot of knowledge, thanks to Wikipedia, but not much passion. Because I was on the tour bus with the Cold Chillin' Crew, I’ve got a picture of Roxane Shante, half asleep, sucking her thumb. You had to be there to get those moments.
Eddie: Ten years later, the same thing happened to me, and I got on the Wu Tang Clan bus. You turned up, hung out, smoked a blunt and did what you had to do. I can’t imagine that happening today.
Spoonfed: Cool. Hanging with the Wu sounds fun. Is that the kind of thing you want from people who enter the competition?
Eddie: Just turn up with your photography and represent – just put in the things that actually mean something to you. We’ll get some kids that front and try to be like other kids, and some that are just out on a limb. If you’re out on a limb I'm with you. Kool Keith was out on a limb, and he still is. If you want to find him today, he's on the boulevard somewhere in LA picking up chicks and making porno flicks. He knows that existence doesn’t have to be a salary – it’s just doing some fresh shit and being able to turn it into money. Hip-hop was what taught me how to be a businessman, and together hip-hop and Star Trek taught me all I need to know to get through Planet Earth.
Normski: A lot of people don't enter competitions any more – everyone thinks they’re too cool. Well, I took part in the Greater London Council photographic competition when I was 14. I had a letter saying thank you for entering, but your pictures weren’t selected. So I tried the next year, and out of five thousand entrants, one of my pictures was exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall! I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen my picture on a wall before then.
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Spoonfed: Well, thanks for the game guys. Is there any chance of checking out the exhibition on the web, maybe?
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Normski: If anyone thinks they can get online and look at the Wildstyles exhibition there, they’re truly mistaken. Get out of your house, spend the flipping bus pass money and go and smell the atmosphere people!
Wildstyles runs at Bar Vinyl, Camden from 21 May to 21 June 2008; for more information about the competition email liat@pymca.com.
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