Excerpt: The Guardian On Hackney Weekend And Hip-Hop’s Social Costs

Nicki Minaj at Hackney Weekend. Courtesy: The Sun (U.K.)

The Hackney Weekend’s lineup proved that hip-hop artists have little difficulty finding their mainstream flow. On Saturday night, Nicki Minaj spat her brand of hip-hop pop before Jay-Z took to the stage, while on Sunday Britain’s Plan B –back in the arms of his first love, hip-hop, having left the crooning and smart suits of his Strickland Banks era behind him–Professor Green and Tinie Tempah will warm the stage by the Olympic Park for headliner Rihanna. “This is hip-hop’s moment,” said 1Xtra DJ and hip-hop artist Charlie Sloth. “For the BBC to acknowledge that hip-hip is the dominant force in modern culture is huge.”This weekLast week, Ben Cooper, head of said of the Hackney Weekend: “We’re going into an area that I don’t think any commercial operator would have gone into after the unrest of last year. That is the job of the BBC.”

Sloth added that local boys Labrinth–born and raised with nine siblings in Hackney–and Tottenham rapper Wretch 32 playing alongside stars like in a video trailing the debate. “It says to our young people, someone messes with you–blow their head off, literally. And you need to ask yourself: are we building massive hip-hop revenues on the backs of our young dead people?”

- From “Jay-Z at Hackney Weekend: but does hip-hop degrade or enhance?” by Alexandra Topping