Will Lemar make the grade
at tonight's Mobo awards?
Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Time to chill the Cristal and book the stretch limousine: the Mobo awards are announced in a few hours' time, and we're damned if we're going to miss the party.
This year there hasn't been anything like the storm of controversy that surged up in 2004, when the judges received paint-stripping condemnation for giving a platform to Jamaican artists Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel, whose lyrics were accused of inciting anti-gay violence - and eventually had to withdraw their nominations.
But there's a wider sense that maybe the judges have played it too safe this year, particularly given that ex-Fame Academy pupil Lemar - hardly the boldest of choices - has received a massive five nominations and many suspect will do well tonight. Some have suggested that perhaps they were put (or felt) under pressure not to rock the boat after last year's debacle; others lament that the list reflects a creeping malaise in the black music scene more generally.
One of the latter is Helen Kolawole, who argues in today's Guardian that rising sales just don't matter - the problem is that "commercial black music has never been so conservative", and that industry involvement has all but smothered creative originality. Everything is "awash with conformity," she suggests, and whatever the surface froth about the Mobos not all that much will change deep down.
Depressing stuff if true; but is it fair? And does the Mobo shortlist do justice to what's really happening on the ground, or paper over the faultlines beneath?
Here we're waiting to see what happens tonight (roving reporter Xan Brooks has bravely taken it upon himself to get strapped into his dinner jacket and attend) before making up our minds, but we're sure the keen minds and sharp tongues in the Vulture community won't be nearly so mealy-mouthed ...
