What’s wrong with this list? Radio BBC 1Xtra revealed its Power list of Urban acts a few days ago, and here we go:
1. Ed Sheeran
2. Disclosure
3. Tinie Tempah
4. Sam Smith
5. Rudimental
…. And I am going to stop there, this was enough to outrage people, because obviously Ed Sheeran (No1) Disclosure (No2) and Sam Smith (No4) are white artists, and what does urban exactly means already? Hip hop, R&B but also electronic dance music and beyond so what’s the problem exactly? Well it’s no mystery that the format ‘Urban’ has been associated with black music and 1Xtra is even described on its website as a ‘black music network’. Let’s be honest, urban is just a politically correct term for black music, and in this case the outrage sadly came from a racial point of view.
A tweet by TwinB tried to calm down the outrage:
‘The 1Xtra list. NO ONE here called Ed Sheeran the most influential artist in Black & urban music. Calm down & put the banners down please.’
But I have never associated Sheeran with Urban style, am I totally out of the loop there? The BBC has since defended the list by declaring that it is ‘committed to supporting new and developing artists’, and BBC Radio 1Xtra’s music manager declared: ‘Every single day of the week, every single hour of the day we support black artists and other races that make black music sounds.’
‘I think that anyone who wants to bring race into the discussion is probably a little bit misguided.’
This is so messed up, he doesn’t want to bring race into this, but at the same time, he is talking about ‘black music sounds’? Is there such thing? I mean is there anything but black music sounds? Beside folk and country is there any popular music that isn’t black music at the origin?… rock, blues, funk,…. So in this case almost everything could be qualified of black music sounds.
Wiley (who reach the 16th place in the list) did abundantly express his rage with humor in tweets like ‘We influence a man and all of a sudden it turns he has influenced us ….Lol’
I honestly don’t understand lists, and this one in particular. If it was a list ranking UK artists who currently sell the most in the UK, call it as it is, but why publish a power list on an urban radio website? A power list, so does this mean that Ed Sheeran is the most powerful man in the UK? In terms of financial or influential powerfulness? To push Sheeran, Disclosure and Smith in this list is just riding mainstream and corporate white pop, proving one more time that white artists are the ones benefiting the most from ‘black music sounds’ as 1Xtra’s music manager calls them.