For its inaugural show, the V&A’s east London outpost is celebrating 125 years of Black music-making in Britain. We asked top performers to pick their favourite exhibit
Goldie: Kemistry and Storm (The Diptych) by Eddie Otchere (1995)
I remember riding my bike up Camden High Street and going past Red or Dead. I saw this girl Kemi, or Kemistry. She was mixed race, like me, with blond dreadlocks. Unbelievable! We ended up going for coffee and started dating. She and her friend Storm took me to Fabio and Grooverider’s night Rage. It was a cauldron of people, with their tops off on podiums, giving it loads. It blew my mind.
I wanted to make music. They just wanted to play it. If I had a pound for every hour that Kemistry and Storm spent in front of those decks, I’d be a billionaire. The question of them being women wasn’t a thing. Can they play? Yes. Can they bury people? Yes. That’s it.
It was a tragic love story. Kemi knew she was going to die young. On the night of the car accident [in April 1999], they were on their way to a gig they weren’t supposed to go to, filling in for someone. I feel a lot for Storm, having to carry that in her heart, but I think Kemi lives inside her anyway. She lives inside of me, for sure. There’s a picture of her in my studio in Thailand and, whenever I’m in arrangement mode, I look up and say: “Is that all right, Kem?” And I get the answers I need.
