Rapper wins Mercury prize (original) (raw)

Britain's hidden army of urban teenagers making music in their tower block bedrooms edged closer to the mainstream last night when an 19-year-old rapper from Bow, east London, won the £20,000 Mercury music prize.

MC Dizzee Rascal, born Dylan Mills, was acknowledged for his debut album Boy In Da Corner, a bleak indictment of high-rise Britain. In it, he raps about guns, knives, depression and making 15-year-old girls pregnant - finally admitting, "I am a problem for Anthony Blair".

The Mercury judges, a respectable collection of music insiders and journalists, succeeded in breaking their persistent image of peddling a pompous "Booker prize of music". For the second year running they ignored the sage bet and nominated their second young black urban MC after Ms Dynamite won last year, aged 21.

Dizzee Rascal, who is hailed to be the future of both British garage and British hip-hop calls himself a champion of the "Playstation generation". His music is not aspirational but grim. He was excluded from every subject at school until a music teacher took him under her wing.

Dizzee Rascal, the youngest ever Mercury winner, accepted his prize from Ms Dynamite and thanked everyone who had "suffered" for urban British music.

He was among those who had suffered, having been repeatedly stabbed this summer while working in the club resorts of Ayia Napa in Cyprus.

He refused to comment on the stabbing, saying: "I have been acknowledged now, that's all I care about.

"I come from nothing, man. I come from the underground, from the ground."

He added that young, black music from the street needed to be acknowledged in the mainstream, but was so strong it would break through anyway.

Breaking the stereotype of the rebellious broken home, Rascal repeatedly thanked his mum, with whom he still lives in a tower block in Bow.

In a video he made specially for the Mercury audience, he filmed his east London neighbourhood, panning across to the more affluent Docklands. He said: "That is Canary Wharf. It's in your face. It takes the piss. There are rich people moving in now, people who work in the city. You can tell they are not living the same way as us."

Dizzee Rascal, who was the 4-1 favourite to win, beat a 12-strong shortlist including Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head - the biggest selling British album worldwide this year.

He also beat the number one debut album by the glam-rock Suffolk band, The Darkness.

The judges were looking for not only the best album of the year, but also one that defined the British "zeitgeist".

The question remains as to whether the Mercury will be the mixed blessing for Dizzee Rascal that it has been for some other artists.

Although Ms Dynamite got a lot of exposure from the prize, her album sales did not increase on the back of it.

Some artists, such as Roni Size, Gomez and Talvin Singh, did not reap the benefits that might have been expected.