The first ever British awards ceremony dedicated entirely to Grime and UK Hip Hop went down on the evening of Thursday, September 17. The atmosphere was electric with anticipation as the KA + GRM Daily Rated Awards had a late start. The mood was set by DJ Rudekid playing all the best grime and garage tracks from the past and present.
First on stage was Daj Jordan, an electric violinist from London who specialises in playing grime, he managed to capture all the synthesiser aspects of some of the biggest grime tunes from your favourite artists including Giggs and Skepta, during his performance. The next performance set the bar even higher with Section Boyz getting the crowd on their feet for their performance of “Trappin’ Ain’t Dead” which can only be described as electric and was full of youthful energy.
The award hosts Claira Hermet and Manny Norte took to their hosting duties in typical comical fashion and welcomed So Solid Crew’s Mega Man and Harvey to the stage to present the award for ‘Best Video’. This was done in a somewhat calamitous fashion as they had forgotten to reveal the nominees and instead revealed that the winner of the award was Stormzy for his “Know Me From” visuals.
Comedian Eddie Kadi came to the stage to present the award for ‘Best Track’, a category full of all the Grime heavyweights of the moment including Stormzy again, but the award had to go to none other than the king of grime himself Skepta for “Shutdown”; unfortunately he was not in attendance to pick up the award. Another lively performance of the night came from Bonkaz with “We Run The Block”, he showed everybody why he is one of the most prestigious grime artists of the moment, despite making a slight mistake, he managed to pick it back up and smash the rest of the performance.
Paigey Cakey and Eyez were welcomed to the stage to introduce the winner of the ‘KA Get Rated Award’. There were very talented nominees in this category that collectively deserved the award however; the award went to Jevon, an emcee from Coventry who has been putting in a lot of work according to his acceptance speech. The next category, which was presented by the show’s hosts, was the ‘Personality of the Year’ award. This category, which featured a number of personalities who most probably can only be found on YouTube included the likes of KSI, was won by Big Nartsie for his ‘Uncle Pain’ YouTube diaries.
The next performance was by a group recently given the new name WSTRN, who have recently signed a deal with Atlantic Records and consist of Louis Rei, Haile (Hi-Lee) and Akelle Charles. There was an obvious added exuberance about the performance of their track “IN2” and you could feel the energy oozing from their voices as everybody sang along.
DJ Target was welcomed to the stage later to present the ‘Best Breakthrough’ award and although there were a handful of worthy winners there can only be one winner; the man who caused a whole lot of beef when he sent for Chip earlier in the year, the winner was Bugzy Malone. BBC 1Xtra’s A. Dot was on next to present the award for ‘Best DJ’, the category featured some of the best in the game, from Mista Jam to Logan Sama, but ultimately the award went to the “best looking fat man in the world” Charlie Sloth, who had a few choice words for his haters.
Amongst the other performances was a tantalisingly strange performance by Little Simz who has toured with the likes of Schoolboy Q and has garnered a massive fan base international. She performed “Dead Body” from her recently released debut album, which went down well as the crowd were on their feet yet again. Much Later, a surprise performance from UK rap veteran Giggs was as explosive as ever, before Grime legend Kano closed the awards performing a selection of career spanning tracks, with a little help from Ghetts.
The rest of the award winners on the night included Diztortion who won ‘Producer of the Year’, Krept & Konan who picked up the ‘Best Project’ award for their major label debut album The Long Way Home. Skepta was also crowned ‘Artist of the Year’, with the ‘GRM Legacy Award’ going to none other than Kano. Congratulations to all the winners of the first KA + GRM Daily Rated Awards, and congratulations to GRM Daily for what is the first of many award ceremonies for the Grime culture in the United Kingdom, see you next year.
Photo Credit: Brendon Fraser and Matt Kelly
Words by Joshua James
