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The xx, Stormzy, Ed Sheeran and Alt-J lead the nominations for the celebrated Mercury Music Prize 2017 - here are all of the runners and riders.

 

Mercury Music Prize Day: the one day of the year that your ultra-optimistic mate rushes out to get £20 on the jazz one “because monster odds” and everyone else states with no little authority that surely Radiohead have got to win it this year. Here’s the twelve shortlisted records, who’s your money on?

Stormzy – ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’

Matching untouchable confidence with honest humility, this chart-topping debut has Mercury winner written all over it. Early bets will be hedged here.

We said: “Stormzy, a prolific tweeter, has built a reputation as something of a comedian and concludes one lush track with a self-effacing skit on which easy-listening radio host Jenny Francis drawls: “That was Stormzy with the smoochy ‘Velvet’.” This is followed by the marching, uncompromising grime of ‘Mr Skeng’, one of the most confrontational tracks on ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’, underlining the fact that the rapper does what he wants, in his own way. Amen to that.”
Early odds: 3/1 

Kate Tempest – ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’

No potential nominee has as much political relevance as ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’. Tempest’s concept album tells the story of strangers meeting in the middle of an apocalypse.

We said: “Tempest’s long-form rap poem in seven parts, released as both her second album and book of verse, concerned seven damaged, shut-away neighbours in a London street forced to interact by a great storm that drives them from their flats. It cut straight to the malignant cancer at the heart of modern urban life; the selfish isolation and alienation that drives us apart and distracts us all from the calamitous fate of humanity. ‘I’m pleading with my loved ones to wake up and love more,’ Tempest rapped; we woke up and loved her more.”

Early odds: 6/1 

J Hus – ‘Common Sense’

One newcomer worthy of a Mercury nod is Stratford prodigy J Hus. His debut fashions chart-ready gems from the 21-year-old’s signature, chameleon-like vocal.

We said: “If any single artist embodies the boundary-trouncing cross-pollination that’s making hip-hop so exciting right now, it’s 20-year-old London rapper J Hus. He’s a total vocal chameleon, capable of convincingly switching flows – switching nationality, even – depending on what the track requires. A single verse can find J scrolling through the louche grind of Jamaican dancehall, the autotuned bounce of Ghanian hiplife, the aggy energy of London grime and the zoned-out drawl of Atlanta rap. It’s a dizzying, dazzling trick.”

Early odds: 9/1

The xx – ‘I See You’

Winners with 2009’s self-titled debut, the gloomy trio’s third album matches the intimate magic of their first work with Jamie xx’s heroics in the electronic world.

We said: “‘I See You’ is not simply an album, but a moment of realisation. The moment where The xx stop glancing shyly at their reflection and confront themselves in the mirror. What they discover is infectious.”

Early odds: 7/1

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