Roots of Hip Hop revealed at Covent Garden's New Arts Venue

Writers from Children's Express loosened their belts, spun their caps and freestyled their way across town to check out The Hospital's opening exhibition.

Yes Yes Y'all! Readers, you wanna know what we did on Wednesday 12th November? We went to The Hospital. Not the real one, the hip hop exhibition at The Hospital in Covent Garden running until January 23, 2004.

We went to see the exhibition and to hear young people MCing. Basically, basically for real, we went to find out about how hip-hop could be represented in a museum. We went to find out if back then it was different to how it is now.

We thought putting hip hop in a museum would make it look like the music is already gone, that there is nothing left of the original movement now it has all gone mainstream. But maybe we found out that the old stuff has come back round again. The Black Eyed Peas have been in the charts for sometime now, and their song "Where is the love?" is like old skool hip-hop. The exhibition shows how old skool hip-hop wasn't just swearing, it wasn't about taking drugs, it wasn't just about smoking weed and having sex. It was all about having fun, you know, it was more about being positive and creating a community.

When you first go into The Hospital, it looks posh. We thought the way they were going to represent hip-hop was not going to be the way we know it. We didn't think we would like the way they showed it. But when you go inside, it is a different story. Inside, it is all set up like a mid 70s basketball court. This gives a real flavour of how hip-hop started off. Kids from the streets hung out in free places like basketball courts and they made music using old style stereos. Most people don't know that, they think it was all R Kelly and people like that, a big industry. Lots of people today are put off by hip-hop being gangsta rap - obscene language and sex, but the exhibition shows it never started off like that. Older people could come and learn that hip-hop is not all about the violence.

So what changed? We saw how the 1990s was the new era because there was a wider audience, and the artists started making money. That resulted in the corruption of the artists and what they started off doing.

Mark Pringle, the curator of the exhibition, said: "That is what the culture business does, it takes something pure and turns it into a way of making money. Hip-hop was never intended to be what it became. It was an accident - kids putting on parties in the only way they knew how, swapping beats and using two turntables. They didn't think they were going to make records. When Rapper's Delight came out, the general opinion was "how can you make records out of this stuff?" Most people wouldn't believe that because hip-hop gets blamed for encouraging violence. Does this exhibition make gangsta culture look good? Mark Pringle said: "The big big sales of gangsta rap go to white middle class kids who want to dip their toe into a bit of ghetto threat. I think everyone knows that type of rap is a kind of fantasy, they don't listen to it and think: "this is real."

Keeping it real is an important part of hip-hop. There is more to it than just bling bling gangstas in America. The exhibition talks about hip hop beats in other cultures all over the world. There is nothing more real than live MCing. And on Wednesday nights the young people from the Camden-based music project Tribal Tree come and set up their decks and MC at the exhibition. Mark Pringle said: "For the first time in the last four years, something that could be called an indigenous hip hop culture has emerged in this country - before it was all American. Now, the words, the accents; it's about the problems of English society. I think it has more value than ever before."

Nickels and Dimes, one of the groups we heard live, have an American name. But they rapped about Blair, and estate life and the situations young people find themselves confronting in London. Sarah McLoughlin, project co coordinator at Tribal Tree, said: "It used to be about copying America but we don't live in massive slums. We do have rough estates and violence and drugs. We don't have the same level of gun violence but it still happens. We have our own issues here and now we are getting the confidence to express them." She added: "There are lots of open mic nights around. But young people who get to perform here do it in front of an audience who wouldn't usually see them. It is a good experience for them."

We asked Mark Pringle what he wanted people to think and feel when they came to the exhibition. He said: "It is an inspiring story. I like to think people will come out of it thinking actually, this is wonderful stuff, and if those kids from the South Bronx, who had nothing, no money, no sense of the world, can produce something so new and revolutionary then anyone can. The potential is there for anyone and I think that is a really strong message that comes out of this show. You don't need the business, you don't need all of this stuff around you, you just need your imagination and the desire to communicate."

Watching the Wednesday night crew, it's true. The tunes were good, and The Hospital is a good place to develop your skills. Young people, as in 21-year-olds who have boy racing cars and 15-year-olds who are otherwise looting peds (stealing mopeds) can come and use the facilities. There are workshops on Saturday afternoons to learn how to do graffiti art, MCing and spinning decks. Young people should make the most of the facilities.

We would definitely go back, for the workshops, the MCing and the crew we met there. Hip-hop culture is bad now, you die for no reason. It is more about money and cars and what you have. Instead of them being together and reaching out to the world, the artists get jealous and kill each other. Yes Yes Y'all is a good reminder of how things were and could be again.

Yes Yes Y'all is at The Hospital till 23 January

Saturday Workshops 2-4pm:

DJing

Beatbox,

Street and Breakdancing

MCing

Graffiti design

Music Production

Call: 020 7170 9159

About the team

This story was produced by Chidi Izamoje and Same Spence, 14, and Nestor Sayo and Sonti Ramirez, 12. It was published by the 24 Hour Museum.