MuchMusic.com | Blog

Speech Debelle, a 26-year-old South Londoner shocked everyone by winning the Mercury Music Prize last night for her debut album Speech Therapy.

The award, which is presented annually to the best British album of the year, saw favourites like La Roux, Kasabian and Florence and the Machine lose out to the relative unknown.

Debelle’s album is said to be the lowest selling album to win the award, having sold less than 3,000 copies since its release on May 31st.

The singer, who mixes both soul and jazz into her unique brand of hip-hop told the BBC that her win throws a “real wrench” into the music industry.

“There’s a lot of music that sounds the same, all day on the radio,” she said. “Hopefully people will hear this album and realise they don’t have to make music that sounds the same - they can make music that sounds good.”

Other artists who were on the Mercury Prize short list included Bat For Lashes, The Horrors and Glasvegas.

Posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 9:27 am by Cam and is filed under News.

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