Original Track Award (Solo) sponsored by Levi’s®

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For a track written and recorded by a solo artist.

WINNER

Ni Maxine - Strange Love

Liverpool Lighthouse, North West

Ni Maxine was inspired to write "Strange Love" after having been deeply impacted by the TV series ‘I May Destroy You’, written by and starring Michaela Coel. Within the song, Ni itemises and explores the different types of love that we often encounter and weaves that multiplicitous journey into the finding of true love that is often right in front of us. The recognition of true love can often start and end with us genuinely loving ourselves and understanding our true worth; only then can we open the door to real love from external sources.

Ni draws on a combination of lived / witnessed experience and imagination. The lyrics are tightly married with the music which ruminates in a 6/8, bass-heavy jazzy dream-space before a bossa nova awakening, acknowledging love that's "right beneath your noses, away from validation-seeking."

Boodz - Inside Step (feat. TL)

Rap Club Productions C.I.C, London

Boodz (real name Tyrelle) says, “This was my first ever release, which features my twin brother. My first verse bars were written for The Spit Game Season 4 Episode 2 cypher. The bars went viral on TikTok and people wanted a full track. When I was working on that, my twin brother TL’s bars also went viral so we decided he should feature. 'Inside Step' became the first of a three-track series I made which is about my experiences with girls. The beat is inspired by 90s hip-hop, but flows I use in the bars bring that era of rap with more modern vibes.”

Joe Winter - Laughing For The West

Youth Music NextGen Fund, London

Joe says, “'Laughing for the West' is a lament on the experience of being a citizen of ‘the west’, as well as an individual navigating their own emotional landscape. It’s about complicity. You’re laughing for it — because you work for it, you benefit from being its citizen; it pays you. But it hurts you too; it overwhelms you.

“And above all of this, you’re a person living on a planet with which ancient parts of you long to reconnect. But you feel so distant from it, and you live as if it were something else that keeps you alive.

“These outside forces seep into your identity, affecting the ways by which you love and can be loved. But you’re so intimately tied up with it that you don’t know what you’d do without it. 'When you shake me it hurts my brain, but when you leave me I waste away.'”