Wednesday, 10th September, 2003 – The Boring Mercury Music Prize

Every year the Mercury Music Prize seems to get bigger and bigger. This year it was covered live by Radio 1, and broadcast on BBC3. It’s seen as being the ‘prestige’ music award, judged by a panel of record industry insiders who aim to celebrate ‘the best in British music…including pop, rock, dance, folk, jazz, and contemporary classical’. It’s this eclecticism that is meant to be its strength, but ends up being its biggest weakness.

Any panel that can sit in judgement on jazz or contemporary classical music will inevitably have a chin-strokiosity quotient of at least 75%, even as high as 90%. These are genres that survive on being deconstructed and pontificated on – ‘difficult’ music for intellectual snobs, that the vast majority of the general public understandably have no time for (I may have made a few sweeping generalisations there, but…. well it makes life easier). As a result, they end up applying the same criteria to judging the merit of a pop or hip-hop album as they do to a jazz or classical album.

This is madness, and results in the whole process looking lame and out of touch. Only too aware of the danger of looking out of touch, the panel seem to try harder with each passing year to prove that they are in touch. But this makes them look more out of touch still. And so on. To summarise: they are deeply out of touch.

This year’s ‘Look how in touch we are!’ gesture involved giving the prize to Dizzee Rascal, the 19 year-old garage MC (why did I write his age?) who once pinched Lisa Maffia’s bum. He seemed pleased but a little confused by it all. He has probably been told that receiving the prize is no sure-fire guarantee of success, as (the horrible) Gomez found to their cost. He has also probably been told that M People once won the award. M People.

Winning the award will no doubt boost his sales temporarily, but for every person who will buy his record off the back of a Mercury Music Prize win, there is another who won’t, for the very same reason. Dizzee may end up being equally cursed and blessed by being taken so quickly and so firmly to the establishment’s bosom.

He is an underground artist. Half of his appeal is the idea that, not only is he saying something new, but that he is doing so Without Your Permission. The other half is that he sounds like a crazy nutty mentalist, and says that he is ‘old skool, like Happy Shopper’, ‘hot like Summer Bay’, and ‘sweet like Tropicana’. Unless the judging panel simply enjoyed these lines for their straightforward, silly, gonzo poetry alone, rather than nodding earnestly, furrowing their brows and using words like ‘urban’, ‘disenfranchised’ and ‘zeitgeist’, then they are cocks and should have their ears fused shut using an very hot iron.

No doubt there is much of profound sociological significance in Dizzee Rascal’s album. But I don’t want it deconstructed for me in painstaking, teeth-grinding detail by some soppy, polo-necked social commentator. If it is there it will make itself heard. Plus, it is always uncomfortable to see a young Black artist being ‘explained’ by middle-aged, White pundits and journalists, as if he were some untamed jungle specimen. It smacks of the Elephant Man: “Look, he can talk! Isn’t he surprisingly intelligent and charming! Do your dance for us!”

The gushing broadsheet reviews were bad enough, but the Mercury Music Prize might end up hamstringing Dizzee before his career has even got off the ground. Mainstream acceptance can be the kiss of death to some artists, giving their work the official stamp of industry-approval that is the opposite of what they are about. To the conspiracy-minded it could even begin to look a bit sinister. Here is a young, Black man, whose words seem to resonate deeply with a lot of other young Black men. By bestowing their most prestigious prize upon him, the record industry can sell him more efficiently and claim him as their own. Remember what they say about keeping your friends near and your enemies nearer?

Now, if you can’t see the irony of what this entry as turned into then I can’t help you.

All I am really trying to say is that the Mercury Music Prize will never be credible with people who really love music, as opposed to people who love intellectualising, defining and contextualising music. And that I am annoyed that I waited too long, and am now too embarrassed to go into HMV and buy Dizzee Rascal’s album emblazoned, as it will inevitably be, with a massive ‘Mercury Music Prize Winner!’ sticker. The imaginary sign above my head would say ‘Pathetic middle-class liberal needs music for dinner party and drinkees’. Not fair. And yes, my own class-related neuroses gatecrash an otherwise cogent argument yet again. It makes sense though, doesn’t it?

At least Dizzee’s win means that the prize didn’t go to MOR milquestoasts Coldplay, or po-faced chin-strokers’ favourites Radiohead. Coldplay have had enough undeserved acclaim for their almost hypnotically bland Lexus-music to last them - and me - a lifetime. And tedious lemon-suckers Radiohead are less a band than a ‘project’ now, with all the fun and life-affirming games that implies.

I hope Dizzee Rascal doesn’t go the same way as previous Mercury-winners-turned-fondue-favourites Portishead. As long as he stays angry and stays silly, he should be alright.

To conclude, a selection of my favourite hip-hop lyrics of all time:

I see a tape recorder and I grab it / No, you can’t have it back, silly rabbit
PUBLIC ENEMY: Don’t Believe the Hype

Like I give a fuck who’s buying my shit / Quit buying it bitch, I’m tired of it, I’m dying to quit
EMINEM: If I Get Locked Up

I want to take you away from all the stresses / Buy you nice flowers and expensive dresses / You don’t believe me / You think I’m cheesy
ROOTS MANUVA: Dreamy Days

Yo mama’s got a glass eye with a fish in it / You mama’s got a peg-leg with a kickstand / Yo mama’s got an afro with a chin-strap
PHARCYDE: Yo Mama

You’re so Anne Frank / Let’s hole up in the attic for like two weeks
OUTKAST: So Fresh, So Clean

I love you like a fat kid loves cake
50 CENT: 21 Questions

That is a lot of love