Radio 1 Hackney Big Weekend, London, review Hackney Marshes is usually home to the pounding feet of hundreds of amateur footballers. But in the run-up to the Olympics, located just up the Lea Navigation, Radio 1 moved its annual live music show to the flat expanse of the pitches and a sea of Wellington boots churned up the increasingly soggy ground. Since the distant days of the seaside road shows, Radio 1 has upped its ambitions somewhat. Stepping into the hulking arena, you could have been inside the grounds of any modern British festival, with mammoth, hi-tech stages, booming tents and rows of overpriced fast-food joints. The only difference was that rather than costing hundreds of pounds, this was all laid on - terrible food aside - for free. The hope was that this would reach the young people of one of the most deprived areas in the country, tarred by the riots of last summer and excluded from the Olympic festivities up the road. Given the heavy police presence and airport-style security checks, you might have imagined you were about to confront an army of feral hooded urchins en masse, but the crowd embraced all types and ages to witness a riot of radio-friendly chart sounds in all their attention-grabbing forms. Nicki Minaj's reputation precedes her as hip-hop's answer to Lady Gaga, all neon, sci-fi outfits and surreal, quick-fire rapping. But under leaden grey skies, the diminutive New Yorker seemed to find it difficult to warm up the crowd, eventually abandoning her harder, theatrical flows for the kind of generic euro-trance that grows wild over the charts like Japanese knotweed. Another graduate of New York's Fame school, Azealia Banks, was more successful, whipping her small but adoring audience into a leg-shaking frenzy. Outside the dance tent on a makeshift sand pitch, a small crowd held an impromptu long-jump session, but the real sport of the day was making the daily 50,000 crowd dance. Even Jack White, one of the few rock guitar players performing, had his packed tent grooving to the funk-tinged heat of his fiercely tight band, burnishing his primal blues sounds, some of which he remembered were recorded at Hackney's Toe Rag studios. Later came an imperious turn from Jay Z, flanked by his protégée, Rihanna, and current touring partner Kanye West. The next day, East End grime pop hero Dizzee Rascal was the surprise guest. He turned a by-then flagging crowd into a pogoing mass to his biggest hit, Bonkers, and even lured the sun out. But the gold-medal winners were women, the marshes awash with pop oestrogen, bringing out the lovers rather than the fighters in the audience. From Jessie J to Florence Welch to Lana del Ray, female voices dominated in all categories and styles, topped off in the end by Rihanna in urban Cleopatra mode. Ending on her biggest hit, We Found Love, the crowd happily marched home, having scored a victory over the weather.