REVIEW: Normski: Man With The Golden Shutter book

From the first pages of Normski; Man With The Golden Shutter you can tell the once sanguine presenter from mid-90’s dance TV shows isn’t messing about when it comes to his sensational photography work. 272 pages of prime hip hop images like you’ve never seen captured for posterity ever before are encased in this marvelous looking hardback heavyweight dive into the memory banks of such esteemed acts like Public Enemy, N.W.A., Cypress Hill, Goldie, Ice T, Run DMC and Wu Tang Clan.

From flicking between the pages, you can smell the scent of fresh new white Adidas trainers, feel the weight of the hefty bulging jewelry on show and hear the phat lyrics being mulled and chewed over wireless microphones. The emerging hip hop scene that the book focuses was often seen as raw, dangerous and not to be messed with, and whilst some of those myths might still only be fantasy, what is evident are many waxing lyrical wizards.

Some of the eye-catching moments include LL Cool J behind the mixing desk with a spectacle wearing Flavour Flav and DJ Bobcat mulling over the vinyl being scratched; breakdancers UK Fresh look the business in what looks like Fila track suits there’s one dancer on the floor spinning out his best windmill and it looks wonderful; those daisy age hippy hip hop mix masters look a little puzzled in some of the snaps, Normski takes up the story: ‘Guys, would you mind holding these?’ I pull out the daisies, and they’re like ‘Why the f*ck would we be holding daisies?!’ I was like, ‘You’re the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”.’ They said ‘cool’, but you can see from their picture they’re still not quite sure.’; She-Rockers come in wearing big padded jackets with a familiar face in tow Betty Boo (Alison Clarkson), fellow band mate Donna McConnell penning some kind words ‘Thank God Normski was always there, camera in hand.’

These photos mentioned above only scratch the surface of the content included. Dream Warriors, X Clan, Merlin MC, DRE INFINITE, Kevin Sanderson, Sweet Tee, 1987 Def Jam tour, Roxanne Shante, Adeva, Rebel MC and Kemistry and Storm are all as important as each other, with incalculable more additions who add to the vibrant colours, diverse real experiences of life in the 80’s-90’s whilst keeping the scene all very much real, it’s refreshing to see artists not media and commercially saturated as some artists in todays money drenched soul less streams seem to be attracted to. With this beauteous book Normski has cemented his name as THE photographer of hip hop.

Normski: Man With The Golden Shutter can be ordered via the following link