The open spaces of Hackney Marshes normally play host to 82full-sized football pitches and innumerableSunday league kickabouts. Club scouts roam the fields, theoretically incognito.
This weekend, the shouts and referees’ whistles have been replaced by the sound of reverberating bass, as a Premier League of urban pop talent – the likes of Jay-Z and Rihanna – sets up campalong east London’s river Lea. Past the fluttering flags and over the high security fence lies the Lea itself,a river system often aspolluted as the Ganges, according to a body set up to safeguard it, LoveThe Lea…
D’Banj shines Big
As the afternoon gives way there is a revelation in the BBC Radio 1Xtra tent. It’s not the latest rapper, however. Singer and band leader D’Banj is introduced as “the Nigerian answer to Michael Jackson”, and proceeds to unleash Afrobeat party music on to the marshes. It’s notjust Hackney’s sizable Nigerian population singing along, though. D’Banj’s recent breakout tune, OliverTwist, is a singalong for all. On the main stage, rapper Nicki Minaj, all Rapunzel tresses and bondagebodysuit, alternates between her hardcore raps (rudest words left out) and more…
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