Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you’re bound to have heard about our forthcoming Rated Awards, be it here on our site, on one of the giant billboards around London, or from your favourite artist plugging their nomination. If not, then catch up with all the nominees here.
This is the first year we’ve ever put this on and something of this magnitude has taken a lot of time and care to prepare. We haven’t done this to benefit ourselves, we’re doing this for the love of the culture. With that being said, hear our 5 reasons why the Rated Awards are oh-so-vital to the grime, rap and urban scene and beyond and just why we’ve decided to put them on.
1) The culture has been underrepresented for way too long.
No disrespect to the MOBO’s, or any of the other platforms that have come before, but the grime and rap scene and surrounding culture hasn’t had proper representation for a long, long while. 2014 was the first year a grime category had ever been included at the MOBO’s, and let’s be real, grime is bigger than just a single category anyway.
2) Grime and UK Rap is all grown up.
The genres have been growing strong and mixing together for the last 15 years, a relatively young genre in comparison to a lot of the others. It’s taken us a while to get here, but grime finally has it’s own diverse, but clearly defined identity. Not everything sounds like Boy In Da Corner, not everything sounds like “Eskibeat”; there is so much range birthed from the OG early days. Let’s celebrate that.
3) The charts have caught up.
This year, Jme, Krept & Konan and Bugzy Malone all had monumentally successful albums drop. These were projects that were as successful in the mainstream charts as they were in the streets. Not to mention Skepta, Stormzy and more’s success with certain singles too. If the masses are paying attention, we need to help curate the real stuff and present it to them.
4) It’s a world wide ting.
After many years of trying (and a lot of people have tried it too, despite what they might say), it seems like our MC’s are finally starting to break overseas. Largely in part due to Skepta’s incredible success in the US, our cousins from across the pond are catching on to this little thing of ours. No longer do we have to have boring conversations about whether our accents will translate overseas! Just like with the mainstream, we need to let the Americans know exactly who we’re rating and the Rated Awards will do just that.
5) The music needs rewarding.
Although we champion our artists as best we can, sometimes it’s just not enough. We’ve had quality music pumped out of the scene for so long, with little reward and not a lot of recognition.The Rated Awards are here to do that. Times are changing.
Make sure you get involved and place your votes here to pick The Rated Awards winners, which will be announced on September 17th.
Words: Alex Griffin