Buzzing: Grime artist beats Bowie for Mercury Prize

Grime artist beats Bowie for Mercury Prize

Grime artist Skepta was awarded Britain's prestigious Mercury Prize on Thursday for his album Konnichiwa, in recognition of a resurgent home-grown genre combining garage, dancehall and hip-hop - muscling out the late rock legend David Bowie.

As he presented the prize, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker said: "We, as a jury, decided that if David Bowie was looking down on the Hammersmith Apollo tonight, he would want the 2016 Hyundai Mercury Prize to go to Skepta."


Campaign to save Nelly from tax debt

Following a TMZ report this week that the Internal Revenue Service hit rapper Nelly with a US$2.4-million (S$3.3-million) tax lien, fans streamed his music non-stop to help boost his royalty payments and dig him out of debt.

The campaign to #SaveNelly boosted his Spotify plays tremendously. Streams of Nelly songs during peak hours tripled this week when compared with last week, according to the company. The streaming service said Nelly had close to a 200 per cent increase in streams on Tuesday and Wednesday at 3pm, compared with those times on Sept 6 and 7.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 17, 2016, with the headline Buzzing: Grime artist beats Bowie for Mercury Prize. Subscribe