Ebony Bell has a pop at urban music.
Have the MOBO Awards lost their way, and does anyone really care anymore about who is going to get the award for Best Urban Act?
The Mobo Awards were founded in 1996 by Kanya King MBE, who has a passion for mainly ‘urban music’ – which is the term used loosely to describe various genres of music mainly produced by black artists, such as R’n’B, Hip Hop, Garage and Grime.
Perhaps some East End star such as Dizzy Rascal, Lethal Bizzle, Professor Green and Tinchey Stryder can still be described as urban, because they have not changed their style to get success. But acts such as Britney Spears and Cheryl Cole just use urban beats borrowed from hip hop and RnB to give themselves street cred, when all they are doing is making pop music.
So on balance I think that MOBO should ditch the references to ‘urban’ and admit that it’s all about pop, in the same way that the Brit Awards, and the Grammys etc. are.