Mercury prize 2019: follow the ceremony live!

Having said that … I think that tonight’s winner will be Idles. Another favourite with the bookies – most have them joint with Dave in second place – they are just as socially engaged as Dave but wear it all much more lightly. Their previous record Brutalism made their name with its reflections on grief and its savaging of the Tories over the NHS; nominated album Joy As An Act of Resistance adds even more besides.

They slamdance against so many of today’s worst ills – poor self-worth, toxic masculinity, class snobbery, xenophobia, the tabloid press – but with heads held high. Their sheer earnestness might irritate a few, but their big honest emotions feels like a really necessary corrective to all the aforementioned awfulness. “My blood brother is Malala, a Polish butcher, he’s Mo Farah” – it’s almost cringeworthy, but we do need this stuff saying out loud.

They made a bit of an effort too, with their blazers and stuff; loving the polo neck from frontman Joe Talbot, looking like Steve Jobs if the iMac hadn’t worked out and he’d become a stick-and-poke tattooist in a polyamorous relationship.

The other much-fancied rapper – in every sense, just look at him up top! – is Dave, whose star is even higher than Slowthai’s. He’s collaborated with Drake, had a UK No 1 single, and created not one but two of the moments of Glastonbury 2019: when he brought on the surprisingly on-point bucket hatted teenager Alex, and when he thanked Stormzy for everything he’d done for the UK scene, during the latter’s Pyramid stage headline set. Stormzy is on the voting panel this year and will no doubt be doing some extremely charismatic and persuasive gong-banging for Dave – but will the rest of the panel agree?

For me this album is spellbinding, occasionally flawed – the therapist framework is a bit cringe, and muddies the sledgehammer ending where his real-life brother calls him from prison to congratulate him – and actually much bleaker than it seems, coming as it does in the wake of Dave’s breakthrough fame. He seems to almost buckle under the weight of his concern for his peers, the trauma of his impoverished past and the history of violence against black people. Even when he’s rapping about getting head he seems to be staring into the middle distance. It’s an important, clear-eyed and devastating record, but arguably difficult to truly love – still, I think the bookies are mad not to have this as their favourite.

The bookies’ favourite – which never wins – is Slowthai with his album Nothing Great About Britain. This would be a worthy winner: quite apart from his lyrics, his voice is one of the most satisfying here. His broad east Midlands burr is another one of the strong regional accents that are currently keeping British rap so tangibly British – alongside Aitch, Jaykae, Jay1, Bugzy Malone et al – and he moves through his lyrics with the bobbing and weaving stance of a grime or garage MC, but there’s straight up punk and trudging hip-hop production too. Lyrically it’s really evocative – social realism blended with neat wordplay (“selling wraps to a mummy”) to make a portrait of working-class Britain that is neither moping nor moralistic. Drug Dealer also has one of the best disses in ages: “You’re mediocre like Katie and Peter.”

Laura says he has been the toast of the red carpet, storming up and down, beer in hand. He said that if he won, he’d spend the money on “stupid stuff! Like blow up a car! … Nah, I just wanna have time to spend with my friends and family.” He also revealed that he has a special pair of pants for his performance this evening – this being a man who will get down to his smalls at the slightest provocation.

The award tends to be decided on the night, with the judges reconvening one final time, so I don’t think nominees the 1975 will be winning – they can’t make it to the ceremony because they’re on tour in Australia.

Their album A Brief History of Online Relationships has been rightly lauded, and in some ways is the perfect album for two of the main tenets of the Mercury prize remit: “to recognise and celebrate artistic achievement” and “provide a snapshot of the year in music”. In blending new wave, disco, ambient techno, Big Music, and acoustic balladry – in the first five songs alone! – with powerful pop hooks, it absolutely nails the first, and by confronting technophobia, Donald Trump, addiction and more, it feels absolutely rooted in 2019.

But with two Brit awards earlier in the year, and no one to hand the prize to this evening, the panel will likely decide it’s better to give someone else a look in here. Every other one of the nominated artists will be performing tonight.

Here’s the judging panel. A bunch of industry people – of whom the most notable is the wonderful Tshepo Mokoena formerly of this parish and now editorial director of Vice – and some famous people too: Stormzy, Jamie Cullum, Jorja Smith, Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, and Radio 1 pair Clara Amfo and Annie Mac. You can expect the Sun to have employed a body language analyst to compare Stormzy and Jorja Smith within the hour.

The shortlist once again, with links to our reviews of the albums:

Welcome to the Mercury prize ceremony 2019! This is one of the strongest fields in the history of the prize, with none of the outright stinkers that have managed to sneak on to shortlists in recent years (Alt-J, Everything is Recorded, Glass Animals, etc) and plenty of records that really have something to say about the way we live now.

I’ll be liveblogging all the arrivals and red carpet lewks, and then the ceremony as it is screened on BBC Four from 9pm; deputy music editor Laura Snapes is covering news at the ceremony itself and will be sending back bits of goss. The winner will be announced at around 10.10pm.