Staying with awards, but back to the Brits, and a debate has been rumbling since last week’s Earls Court bash over whether or not Ms. Joss Stone - a white girl from Devon - was truly worthy of the title of Best Urban Act. Some music biz insiders reckon the award should have gone to either Jamelia or **Dizzee
Rascal**, both of whom left the Brits empty handed and, some would argue, better fit the definition of ‘urban music’.
However, a quick random survey of media types by the BBC found general support for Ms Stone and her Best Urban victory. Chris Blenkarn,
Deputy Editor at Touch magazine told the Beeb: "She [Stone]
makes soul music and that definitely comes under the category of what we describe as 'urban'. The fact that she's from Devon is the interesting thing because most of the music we cover is made in large cities and she's literally rural."
**Jordan
Kensington** of the Urban Music Awards said that Stone’s win could be good for showing that in a multi-cultural Britain no one music genre is ‘owned’ by any one ethnic group:
"If Joss Stone can be accepted within the urban music community,
I think acts from other ethnicities doing classical music and rock should be accepted too."
**Mark
Sadler, Head Of Music Programming at MTV Networks - whose MTV
Base** viewers ultimately voted for the Best Urban award at the
Brits - said: "Joss Stone is a soul artist. Her first album was called ‘The Soul Sessions’. So urban is a very broad brushstroke that is the umbrella over the top of sub-genres, and there are offshoots of all of those."
Mercury-nominated
Ty however wasn’t so convinced. Pointing out that the ‘urban’
tag is kinda made up anyway, he told the BBC: "If Joss
Stone is the closest thing that they feel comfortable championing because of what she looks like and how she sounds and who she's signed to, then so be it. It's got nothing to do with what's really going on."