#britishgrime

This year’s dry, pasty-faced, de-clawed Brits had nothing to rival last year’s grime invasion, in fact it was hard to spot any black faces amongst the nominees, the attendees, or the winners.

Can anyone tell me why Aphex Twin was nominated for Best British Male this year? One album in at number eight on the charts for the grand total of four weeks, not making a dent in the singles chart and yet pushing out Tinie Tempah, Naughty Boy, MNEK and Lethal Bizzle? What about Foals getting into the Best British Group category with one album which peaked at number three, when perpetual chart botherers Little Mix, who have also charted in America, are left out? That’s not to mention Grammy nominee Lianne La Havas who has been the poster girl for the #BritsSoWhite hashtag after being snubbed. To nominate Laura Marling, who again has had one album chart at number 8 in the eligibility period, and Amy Winehouse who basically made it in posthumously through a rules loophole, shows a huge measure of disrespect to La Havas, and makes the British music industry look ridiculous.

Since Stormzy called the Brits out on the lack of diversity in the nominees and they grovellingly  issued a statement about ‘looking into’ more BAME voters, apologists have been shrugging and citing eligibility cut offs like they were really keen to include more BAME acts but were somehow stymied by the rules they themselves created.

Even if we’re buying the ‘transparent’ voting process, the Brits need to be held accountable for other choices they made on the night. If they were so apologetic about Stormzy missing out on eligibility by one week, why not ask him to come and perform Shut Up? The musical tribute to David Bowie was nice, but did it also require a five minute ‘special’ Brit acceptance speech from Gary Oldman and Annie Lennox? I personally think David Bowie would have hated every second of that self-indulgent rambling speech which listed every synonym for ‘legend’ in the dictionary and was cloyingly desperate to evoke emotion in the boozy crowd of record industry blerts. That time could have been used to showcase British urban music instead if the Brits were so concerned about diversity.

Some of the biggest selling singles, and the music that will come to define 2015, were overlooked from start to finish. If the charts were dominated by OMI and ‘Cheerleader’, ‘See You Again’ by Wiz Khalifa, and ‘Trap Queen’ by Fetty Wap, then you wouldn’t have known it from the International Male category. Not even Jason Derulo made it in! If Fleur East’s earworm ‘Sax’ was one of the most played records on music radio, it couldn’t compete with Catfish and the Bottlemen’s number 10 placed album and complete lack of top forty singles - she didn’t even get into the Breakthrough category. Krept and Konan might have had a breakout album and single in 2015 - but would the Brits voters have even known that? The Brits are keen to tell us that the eligible nominees are picked from the top 1000 selling singles, but they are less keen to tell us how many of their voting panel are white. (There is a petition here for them to release the info).