I’m always intrigued by the winners of the Mercury Prize – the UK’s most coveted music award. The judges of this prize have a reputation for awarding the prize to outsiders rather than the favourites. Past winners include Primal Scream, M People (‘Movin’ On Up’), Pulp, Roni Size/Reprazent, PJ Harvey, Klaxons and Arctic Monkeys. This year’s recently announced prize went to female hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, a 26 year-old South Londoner whose debut album Speech Therapy proved very popular amongst judges. Other nominees for the this year’s prize included Kasabian, Bat For Lashes, La Roux, Friendly Fires, Florence and the Machine and Lisa Hannigan. I’ve been listening to the music on her MySpace site all morning now – it’s raw, pretty and unlike ‘rap’ as we know it; it’s more like poetry with a backdrop of clarinets, violins and jembes. Congratulations to Speech Debelle and her independent record label Ninja Tune for a great album and for winning the Mercury Prize.
