Scottish electric hip-hop act Young Fathers have walked away as winners of the coveted 2014 Mercury Music Prize.
The group’s album Dead, was voted the best of the shortlisted twelve artists.
It’s not the first time a obscure act has taken the prize, in 2009 little known British rapper Speech Debelle took the top prize with Speech Therapy. She beat much more established acts like Florence and The Machine, Bat For Lashes, and Kasabian.
This year it was no different, well known acts such as Damon Albarn, Bombay Bicycle Club and Royal Blood were all in the running, but it was the little known Scottish outfit Young Fathers that were crowned the winners.
There were no rambling speeches from the band or unstoppable tears, they kept their acceptance speech short and sweet. Young Fathers simply said: “Thank you. We love you. We love you all. Thank you.”
If you lashed a few bob on the Scots to win, mostly likely you had a great return. The group were way down on the bookies list to take the award. The bookies favourite was FKA Twigs 5/2, Kate Tempest 3/1, Royal Blood 5/1 and towards the bottom half the Edinburgh trio were at 12/1.
Speaking to Gigwise, Radio 1 DJ Alice Levine said: “It’s positive. We took it in our stride. When we were younger we always wanted to make something that was bigger than the city we were living in. We know what we’ve done is special.”
A Mercury nomination can really help a smaller act with album sales. Data released by the Official Charts Company showed that Young Fathers’ LP sales had risen by 31% since their nomination.
See the full list of percentage increase in album sales since each artist’s mercury nomination below.
GoGo Penguin: 138%
Kate Tempest: 124%
FKA Twigs: 83%
Royal Blood: 62%
Jungle: 59%
Nick Mulvey: 33%
Polar Bear: 33%
Young Fathers: 31%
East India Youth: 13%
Damon Albarn: 8%
Bombay Bicycle Club: 7%
Anna Calvi: 6%
