Friday, October 01, 2004
Mobo's. Cop?
The MOBO awards took place in that there London last night, and what a pointless ceremony they turned out to be. It's hard, anyway, to take any ceremony seriously that offers a prize for best ringtone, but the awards themselves seem entirely irrelelevant these days. When they started there was a genuine purpose to them, which was to highlight black music which wasn't getting the coverage, airplay, or respect it deserved outside of dedicated outlets. Nowadays of course, R&B and Hip-hop are mainstays of the charts, and there was little in the nominations that wouldn't have been equally at home at the Brits, or the Mercury or any other of the myriad ceremonies that take place at this time of year.
Indeed, it seems that it's not just the public that can't really see the point of the awards, few big names could be bothered turning up, with even host Pharell Williams pulling out at the last minute due to his belief that the whole thing was going to be a non-event, which is a fair enough opinion, but perhaps was one that he should have held before actually agreeing to do it.
Ultimately, however, the main point of interest of the night was down to the protests, which it seemed the organisers were unable to avoid. To stop Peter Tatchell and Outrage! turning up and making a fuss, they looked at the Reggae category and decided to pull Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel off - perhaps not the best choice of words - on the not unreasonable grounds that they're a pair of homophobic fuckwits. Unfortunately for the Mobo's, this meant that the Black Music Council decided to turn up and protest about their expulsion, somehow believing that speaking out against prejudice is, in itself, a form of prejudice. Somehow we feel that they might not have been quite so keen to bandy about phrases about free speech willy nilly had Skrewdriver been nominated for a Brit Award.
Oh, and they gave Jamie Cullum a prize. Gits.
Indeed, it seems that it's not just the public that can't really see the point of the awards, few big names could be bothered turning up, with even host Pharell Williams pulling out at the last minute due to his belief that the whole thing was going to be a non-event, which is a fair enough opinion, but perhaps was one that he should have held before actually agreeing to do it.
Ultimately, however, the main point of interest of the night was down to the protests, which it seemed the organisers were unable to avoid. To stop Peter Tatchell and Outrage! turning up and making a fuss, they looked at the Reggae category and decided to pull Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel off - perhaps not the best choice of words - on the not unreasonable grounds that they're a pair of homophobic fuckwits. Unfortunately for the Mobo's, this meant that the Black Music Council decided to turn up and protest about their expulsion, somehow believing that speaking out against prejudice is, in itself, a form of prejudice. Somehow we feel that they might not have been quite so keen to bandy about phrases about free speech willy nilly had Skrewdriver been nominated for a Brit Award.
Oh, and they gave Jamie Cullum a prize. Gits.
