Hip-hop goes to hospital

Two white, middle-aged men and a rap exhibition? Don’t stress, it’s dope, says Patrick Strudwick

Covent Garden, where operagoers, tourists and schicki-micki shops collide, is a far cry from the housing projects, sports halls and tenements of the South Bronx, where hip-hop was born. But WC2 is where Britain’s first exhibition tracing hip-hop’s roots is to be located. More precisely, the show Yes Yes Y’all will be housed in a converted hospital on fashionable Endell Street.

Hip-hop has certainly come a long way since its inauspicious beginnings in the early 1970s — and not just from the mean streets of the Bronx to the la-di-da streets of London. The multibillion-dollar industry is now as pervasive in contemporary popular culture as rock’n’roll once was. But surely an exhibition aiming to retrace the genre’s first steps should be located back where it all began? Dave Stewart, former Eurythmic and creative director at the Hospital, defends the location fiercely: "To say you can only exhibit this material in New York is like saying you should only see Egyptian mummies in Egypt. I think it’s great that a piece of art moves to another part of the world and the people there can have a chance to understand where it comes from," he says. Mark Pringle, the show’s curator, also argues for London: "There’s a huge hip-hop constituency here and we’re archivists: we tend to preserve what the Americans reject."

He goes on to explain how he intends to present the material. The visitor will be projected back to 1970s New York through voices, images and music. Photos from the era and quotes from hip-hop’s forefathers (Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, et al) will be accompanied by a soundtrack of early hip-hop recordings and snippets of interviews with their creators. "We also have more than a thousand hours of taped interviews," adds Stewart. Live interactive elements will bring the show to life, with workshops by DJs and MCs, graffiti events and break-dancing displays.

"I’ve always had a problem with rock’n’roll museums," says Pringle, "because as soon as you put music in a museum, it’s dead. One of the things the original show (in Seattle) had was clothes from the era," he recalls. "But they were hung on mannequins, which made you feel like you were at a memorial. We’re going to hang them on coat hangers, as if they’re just about to be worn again."

Despite his and Stewart’s reassurances that the show’s material will overcome its location, one nagging thought remains: they are white, middle-aged, middle-class Englishmen. These days, however, Stewart has fingers in more pies than a compulsive overeater in a Mr Kipling factory. Being creative director for the building rather than the exhibition itself, he sees no discrepancy. "Not being an expert myself, I work with people who are experts in the field," he explains. Among these are the authors of the book that accompanies the exhibition, Jim Fricke and Charlie Ahearn. Fricke, who is providing an audiovisual show, curated the original exhibition, while Ahearn, who took many of the show’s photos, is a celebrated film-maker. His 1982 movie Wild Style became a hip-hop classic. As Stewart describes his own introduction to the genre in the mid-1980s and his recent collaborations with the producer Dr Dre, it becomes clear that his knowledge of hip-hop is also far from superficial.

Pringle is equally unfazed by my concern that his own culture is too far removed from the show’s subject. "When I was in bands, way back, I was a white, middle-class guy writing black music for a black, working-class singer," he says. "I know a lot about the subject and I love it." And, as he talks about the history of hip-hop, his passion and encyclopedic knowledge prove astonishing. I come away feeling certain that if the exhibition delivers even half of Pringle’s insight and enthusiasm, it will be one of the most exciting London has seen.

Yes Yes Y’all opens on October 24