🎤 Mercury Prize - Best of the rest (2002) 🎤

Music
1

Previous winners from these threads…

1995 - Tricky - Maxinquaye
1999 - Blur - 13
2001 - Radiohead - Amnesiac
2005 - Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
2008 - Radiohead - In Rainbows
2009 - The Horrors - Primary Colours
2011 - Metronomy - The English Riviera
2013 - Jon Hopkins - Immunity
2017 - The xx - I see you
2021 - Sault - Untitled (rise) / Mogwai - As the love continues

Today we look back to 2002 when the mercury prize was won by Ms. Dynamite - A little deeper
But as is customary with these threads who would you like to win 2nd place? Normal format of up to 3 votes!

  • Guy Barker - Soundtrack
  • The Bees - Sunshine hit me
  • David Bowie - Heathen
  • The Coral - The Coral
  • Doves - The Last Broadcast
  • The Electric soft parade - Holes in the wall
  • Gemma Hayes - Night on my side
  • Beverley Knight - Who am I
  • Roots Manuva - Run come save me
  • Joanna MacGregor - Play
  • The Streets - Original Pirate material
0 voters
2

The Coral and it isn’t even close.

2 Likes
3

Roots Manuva all day long

1 Like
5

The Bees, without a doubt.

Totally forgot about the Electric Soft Parade. Going to dig out ‘Silent To The Dark’ at some point today and give that a listen.

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6

Don’t mug yourself

5 Likes
7

Streets will run away with this imho

haven’t listened to that Roots Manuva album, but having just heard a great track from it on ML I’m keen to give it a spin

1 Like
9

That Bees record is good but not a patch on what they did after. Roots Manuva rounds out my 3.

10

that Beverley Knight album is called Who I Am, not Who Am I, won’t take any disrespect of Wolverhampton’s finest

1 Like
11

I’ll amend!

12

The Last Broadcast is in my all time top 10 albums, so of course I’m gonna vote for that.

Sunshine Hit Me gets thoroughly rinsed every summer. Not their best album, but one hell of a start.

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13

I can’t sorry!

14

Ditto.

Suspect Roots Manuva might edge one of them out if I knew the record a bit better.

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15

I haven’t listened to all the albums, and certainly not recently, but the Roots Manuva album is absolutely seminal and iconic in a way that none of the others are even close to (possible exception of the Streets, but personally I can’t listen to this anymore without it bringing to mind the progressively shitty stuff he put out after).
I liked some of the indie bands listed here but none are anywhere near the kind of level of Roots Manuva so I’m only voting for two albums so as not to dilute it.
#tacticalvoting

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17

That Gemma Hayes album is really good - will have to dig that out again and give it a spin. I do like Run Come Save Me, but prefer Brand New Second Hand as far as Roots Manuva goes. The rest I can take or leave

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18

oh shit this is embarassing, I was thinking of Brand New Second Hand when I posted above. Yeah you can disregard that post everyone! :rofl:
Still better than Doves mind.

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19

Yeah it’s an absolutely brilliant record. Actually really wish it had won the Mercury prize that year - not that Ms Dynamite wasn’t a worthy winner, she totally was - but think the extra push could have really shone a light on UK hip hop and given it the type of exposure it had never had before. Saying that though, Ms Dynamite winning didn’t really do that either so who knows. The following year’s winner would change UK hip hop forever anyway…

20

never forgave ESP for not putting the incredible space rock freakout ending of Silent To the Dark they used to play live on the album and going with that weedy piano dribble instead.

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21

Original Pirate Material is one of the best albums ever produced, so wins hands down for me. Roots Manuva second and Ms Dynamite would have been 3 if I could choose it.

I don’t even know 4 of them (Guy Barker, The Bees, Gemma Hayes and Joanna MacGregor)

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22

Also The Coral used to annoy the shit out of me.

23

Interested to know what people think about The Streets who weren’t aged between 15 & 30 at the time (I was 18, so perfect!). Not sure if it resonates if you weren’t there.

But to me it’s absolutely incredible it didn’t win this year, the sound of its time for sure. And one of the great British albums of all time.

Roots Manuva is great too, if patchy. And love The Coral.

4 Likes