Normski's inside view

Photography: Hip Odyssey

Who can forget the larger than life and effusive Normski (Norman Anderson) on BBC2's Dance Energy (broadcast after The Fresh Prince) - one of the few TV series to chart the emergence of the sounds of street culture (hip hop and dance music) in the early 1990s?

His enthusiasm was infectious: he had genuine belief in the the music and artists guesting on Dance Energy. Which is why this exhibition of 60 of Normski's photographs promises to be so revealing, not only tracking the beginnings of the process of a marginalised culture becoming mainstream, but providing the view of a trusted insider. After all, Normski was in the loop.

Take, for example, Roxanne Shante, fast asleep on a tour bus during a visit to the UK in 1988; it looks as bling as an Inter-City train. Or a baby-faced, virtually unknown LL Cool J, sporting a thick gold rope necklace that Mr T would probably kill for, caught mid-performance during his first UK concert in 1987.

British icons are also covered such as Goldie, Jazzie B, Soul II Soul and also some of those that didn't become stars. Normski's portrait of militant UK rap crew Hijack wearing balaclavas, tooled up and decked out in black, is a piercing visceral image, but the fact it was banned in 1990 speaks volumes.

Our supposedly intolerant friends in the States had just seen the release of NWA's third LP and the brutal Straight Out Of Compton LP with F**k Tha Police was two years old.