There's been a lot of talk that 2009 is the year of the female artist. Albums from the likes of La Roux, Bat for Lashes and Florence & The Machine have caused quite a stir and for the first time in the history of the Mercury Music Prize there were five female nominees this year. Betting folk were laying their houses on a Florence, Bat or Roux victory. A woman did win...just not the woman everybody expected!

Speech Debelle had sold a little over three thousand copies of her debut album 'Speech Therapy', when she collected a cool twenty grand in prize money last night. Just four years ago she was living in a hostel for the homeless.

Lyrically her album, 'Speech Therapy', is clearly inspired by her time on the streets but musically it has a warmth to it that you don't necessarily expect from a rap record. Her arrangements for drums, clarinet, double bass and piano (among other instruments) nod to jazz and old school hip hop. Thankfully she values the riff and the rhyme equally.

The Mercury Music Prize is far from perfect (M People won it in '94 for goodness' sake) but you'd be hard pressed to argue that by naming Speech Debelle's debut as their album of the year for 2009, the panel have, at least, done a good thing. As the lady herself says in album track 'Bad Boy', 'a life unpraised is a life unsure, always looking for help but expecting closed doors'. This win will give Speech Debelle a deserved leg up, a platform, a means to go on and achieve her full potential as an artist...and she'll surely shift more than three thousand copies along the way!

Jan