Kaytranada has won the Polaris Music prize for his album 99.9%. The award – Canada’s equivalent to the Mercury prize – is given to the Canadian album with the most artistic merit, regardless of sales or label.
Haitian-born Kaytranada – real name Louis Kevin Celestin – became the first winner of the prize to come from the world of hip-hop and R&B. “I hope that the next generation are not afraid to do more,” he said. “They can just do whatever they want. They can do it yourself like I did.”
The album was released in the UK on XL, which signed Kaytranada on the back of a series of remixes. “I signed the deal [with XL] in 2014, and it didn’t make much sense that I had to go on tour when none of my music was out, only my remixes,” he told the Guardian earlier this year. “I’m not just a remix guy. Right now, everyone is offering me remixes, but I just don’t have the motivation like I did before. I will eventually, for sure, but it’s not what I am into right now.”
The shortlist of 10 albums is drawn up after a 192 jurors – mainly music journalists and bloggers – nominate and debate albums. A grand jury of 11 people then picks the winner. Last year, one juror complained about the selection process, conducted via a private Google group: “Discussions about music were a distant second to bullying and overblown egos.”
This year, to try to counter that, the prize’s founder, Steve Jordan, changed the rules, insisting all jurors nominate at least one album or respond to another nomination, but without being negative, which would risk them being dropped from the jury.
“It was a reaction to something that was bothering us for a couple of years, which is the lack of participation on behalf of a lot of the jury members, and because Polaris selects records from the discussion that we have, when you have people that aren’t really participating we needed to know why,” he told Billboard.
“We got a bunch of different answers back, but one of the main things they didn’t like were the personal attacks and tone that seemed to be prevalent in the group – because by and large the discussions seemed to be completely respectful – but things did seem to be teetering into the personal. We just swung the pendulum back the other way. We’re only going to talk about what people like and only positive comments will be allowed.”
