Nines and Mahalia win big at MOBO Awards

9 December 2020

Nines and Mahalia were the big winners at the MOBO Awards.

Mahalia at the MOBO Awards

The 'Airplane Mode' rapper took home the Album of the Year award for his LP, 'Crabs in a Bucket', as well as Best Hip Hop Act at the music awards, which went virtual for 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday night (09.12.20).

And Mahalia took home the Best Female Act prize as well as Best R&B/Soul Act whilst Young T & Bugsey won Song of the Year for their track, featuring Headie One, with their viral song 'Don't Rush'. Best Male Act went to Headie One whilst Burna Boy took home Best International Act. Chunkz - who hosted the award show with Maya Jama - won Best Media Personality whilst Aitch took home the Best Newcomer prize.

Steve McQueen won the Inspiration Award and he thanked them for the "extraordinary prize".

The '12 Years a Slave' filmmaker said: "This is an extraordinary prize. Thank you so much. The MOBO Awards for me is part of the idea of Small Acts. When people didn’t want to recognise us, we recognised ourselves and that’s given me the inspiration to go forward."

It comes as MOBO Awards founder Kanya King launched MOBOLISE, which aims to connect black people to the best career opportunities and open the conversation about diversity.

Kanya said: "Studies show that having more diverse talent has a positive impact on the bottom line. That is why we have launched MOBOLISE as a powerful tool for companies and organisations to drive diversity within their workforces and leaderships.

"We want to bring allies and advocates together so they can access talent of all ages and backgrounds with a wide range of abilities from a more diverse pool."

Supporting the new campaign, singer Emeli Sande added: "I definitely feel that we need more representation within executive roles. It still is completely disproportionate – even more so now that you have so much black music in the charts."Still I can count on one hand how many executives I know. You go into the labels, and you have people and A&Rs, but to actually get to the top boss and sit in an office and it be a black man, let alone black woman, is very, very rare."

A full list of MOBO Award winners are as follows:

Best Male Act - Headie One

Best Female Act - Mahalia

Album of the Year - Nine, 'Crabs in a Bucket'

Song of the Year - Young T & Bugsey ft. Headie One, 'Don't Rush'.

Best Newcomer - Aitch

Video of the Year - NSG, 'Lupita'

Best R&B/Soul Act - Mahalia

Best Hip Hop Act - Nines

Best Grime Act - JME

Best International Act - Burna Boy

Best Performance in a TV Show/Film - Michael Ward, 'Blue Story'