Tim Ingham, editor of Music Week
Hold on a tick, my wobbly podium needs stabilising: I'm painfully aware of being a middle-class white male defending the election of a middle-class white male atop an urban music countdown. So it's probably wise to promptly turn to a great black entertainer for help: as Chris Rock remarked about another moment of questionable justice, the verdict of the OJ Simpson trial: "That shit wasn't about race. That shit was about fame." Ed Sheeran might be an unlikely protege of the UK urban music scene, but that doesn't mean his robust credentials in this realm should be retrospectively scrubbed away. Indeed, you could argue that a pasty ginger kid from Suffolk had to work especially hard, be especially good, to earn patronage from 1Xtra and online music channel SBTV's unforgiving communities. Sheeran didn't (and couldn't) leverage any racial privilege to secure this endorsement. He did it all with a much purer weapon – talent. These fans remain at the nucleus of his following, but his fame has now blossomed into a global superstardom which trumps anyone else in the UK urban music fraternity. A white boy topping a "black music" power list is bound to be contentious, but in this case it's a reasonable decision.
Elijah, DJ label owner, writer and broadcaster on Rinse FM
Should Ed Sheeran have topped a chart of artists that 1Xtra has supported from early in their careers to measure their success in the present day? Yes. Should he top a chart that calls him the most influential person in black and urban music? No. 1Xtra has now stated it didn't claim the latter. I think people are having a clarity issue regarding what the list is supposed to represent, achieve, and then in turn look at 1Xtra in the same way. A Radio 1 top five could have been pretty much the same. Platforms like 1Xtra are always associated with representing artists that aren't recognised in the mainstream world and I think they have missed an opportunity to promote a strong list of artists who are currently making waves that are not necessarily on every playlist across the country. Turning it into a race argument is a really simple way of looking at it.
TI But don't Sheeran's career origins, especially that support from 1Xtra and SBTV, make him a worthy winner because he's still anchored in the urban scene? I agree with you over the lack of clarity in what 1Xtra's power list refers to, but with these imprecise parameters, Sheeran's achievements – a US chart-topping album, selling out Madison Square Garden, 10 million Twitter followers – make him a justifiable No 1.
E I am a working-class black male, who is also an active DJ championing grime music on Rinse FM, and in the clubs every week among different artists. You would struggle to find one artist in our scene of any racial background, which I'd say makes up a big proportion of what people consider UK Urban Music today who would agree with this. Do you think there is any privilege in having a racial advantage on being on a niche platform like 1Xtra and SBTV? You suggest it; like it makes him an even better artist because of the route in which he was discovered, and I don't think that is the case, even though he is undeniably exceptionally talented.
TI Clearly I don't believe Ed Sheeran's UK urban music pedigree inherently makes him a better artist – much of his output is too saccharine for my tastes. I do, however, think his shatterproof connection with UK urban music renders him an important, unique and, yes, very powerful representative of the scene worldwide.
To a large section of British music fans, Sheeran's gigantic success has seemed to "come out of nowhere". I certainly don't need to tell you that the British urban music scene isn't nowhere; it's just sadly off the radar to many people who bow to pop or indie-fixated sources to inform their musical identity. As such, Sheeran is dragging an audience ignorant of UK urban music one step closer to giving this oft-thrilling scene its due attention. I completely appreciate that he's not as musically influential as Wiley, as skilled as Skepta or as exciting as Ghetts. But he's upped the chances of all of these artists to get heard by a hitherto hesitant audience – and sold a shedload of his own records while he's been at it.
E That's right. Urban music is sadly off the radar to British music fans, and if they take a look at this, it doesn't look like they are missing much. So it further puts it in the background. For most people, discovering Ed Sheeran won't lead them to find Wiley, Skepta or anyone else on this list. For example, Spotify-related artists to Ed come up as Taylor Swift, One Direction and Coldplay. On YouTube it's the same, and that's how most of his fan base would be hearing him now, way beyond 1xtra. It doesn't help educate people about what UK urban music really is in 2014. You can see on every article these "what is black music? Music doesn't have colour" comments. It feels like a redundant concept to a lot of people, probably because of a lack of education in the roots of where, how and when the music they listen to today was started and developed. That is at the centre of the issue.
TI I agree that UK urban music gets a rough ride: the number of white acts popularising styles pioneered by black musicians remains unnerving. (Even worse: recent government data showed just 7% of employees in the UK music and performing arts industries are non-white – a power list worth serious scrutiny.) And yet, Sheeran is a legitimate servant of the urban scene, one who has continued to collaborate with grime artists and who initially shunned more sure-fire, bourgeois springboards into the charts. This came to a head in early 2012, when the NME unleashed an embarrassing "How shit is Ed Sheeran?" campaign on Twitter. The subtext? We never ordained this cultural upstart, let's slaughter him. But the NME had around 400,000 followers, Sheeran more than 6 million. The collision of entitled indie bellwether with urban music phenomenon wasn't pretty. But it was a loud indication that the UK urban scene deserves more mainstream acknowledgment – and why Sheeran's a justified, if improbable, talisman for the cause.
E You see the problem? None of this should be the focus. This hasn't done any good for the scene at all. It has shone a light on problems that we have reaching the wider music world, and most people from our scene are just sitting back and accepting it because they feel powerless. Who cares what the NME thinks in 2014, especially from an urban perspective? We have never cared. It's clear to us that, of people working in the music industry, only 7% are non-white . They produce lists like this, and tell the rest of us it's OK.
Even in the reporting of it across so many platforms there have barely been any non-white industry professionals writing about it. We have people covering it as a "story" because they have nothing emotionally invested in seeing this music develop. It is a multi-layered issue that usually comes up around black history month and Mobo awards time in October. It is an issue bigger than Ed Sheeran, bigger than all the artists on the list and 1Xtra. It's an identity issue, something not everyone will understand.
