Coventry-born rapper Pa Salieu, who is also Mercury-nominated for his latest album Afrikan Alien, says the change was long overdue.<\/p>\n
“I always heard of Mercury, growing up, but it seemed so far away, out of reach,” he says.<\/p>\n
“So I think the Mercury Prize should be in Coventry, in Birmingham. It should move like a tour. Let the youth feel heard.”<\/p>\n
In Newcastle, the build-up to the ceremony has included a week of fringe events, including concerts from local artists and workshops for newcomers looking for their break.<\/p>\n
Among the performers is 29-year-old Finn Forster, from Teesside, who’s gone from playing pubs to supporting Stereophonics on their recent European tour.<\/p>\n
He says he’s “super grateful for how much the music industry is taking a step outside of London and the major cities”.<\/p>\n
“The north-east has been overlooked for so long,” he says. “Everyone’s incredibly proud about the fact the Mercury is coming \u2013 and there’s such a high calibre of people performing at the fringe.”<\/p>\n
Thursday’s ceremony will be held at the Utilita Arena, hosted by Sunderland native Lauren Laverne, with performances from nine of the 12 nominees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coventry-born rapper Pa Salieu, who is also Mercury-nominated for his latest album Afrikan Alien, says the change was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-216885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}