T-Pain for president
When I first moved to London from the States, I remember British TV being especially hard to swallow. After being raised on a diet of big budget television programmes and polished presenters, watching UK news and soaps like Coronation Street made my stomach turn. Newsreaders were clumsy, make-up was minimal, there was no soft focus lighting… In some ways, I had to hand it to the UK - the shit’s real. Raw as fuck. But at the same time, I’d catch myself watching wackass US pop programmes like American Idol - shows that I never would’ve watched State-side - just for the sake of watching something glittery and easy on the eye. I mean, damn, have you ever seen the people that present the East Anglia weather forecast? Bearing this in mind, I stepped up to the MOBO Awards in September - despite how much I support the ideas behind it - with the mentality of someone attending a comedy show.
In the four times I’d been to the O2 Arena previously, the only security measure I encountered was a brief ticket/bag check at the entrance of the actual arena. Is it coincidence that they had enough security to manage a world war when the Music of Black Origin Awards roll through? After a shockingly thorough check at the stadium entrance and yet another at the venue entrance, we finally found ourselves in the arena. I pushed my way through swarms of wide-eyed middle class white folks, blatantly attending for the sake of talking about how cultural they are at some whitewashed dinner party (“I love black people. Why, just the other day I was at the MOBOs…”). We got settled just as Shaggy, the host for the evening, launched into a medley of his greatest hits (all two of them). Then Quentin Tarantino stumbled onstage to present the first award. Clearly wasted, he made a few awkward slurred jokes - “Welcome to the MOFO awards, oops, I mean MOBO awards!” - and I knew a riveting night of amazing scriptwriting lay ahead. Craig David and Kano came on stage to play some hip pop bullshit, with the word ‘CRAIG’ lit up on massive letters behind them. He beamed his way through the forgettable performance, so happy to be back in the limelight for reasons beyond Bo’ Selecta. After their performance, the cameras cut backstage to the horrific Mutya, stuffed uncomfortably into a pink condom (was that supposed to be a dress?), who proceeded to say, “I’m looking forward to seeing Kano and Craig David.” Continuity, anyone?
I soon began drunkenly scrawling random bullet-pointed notes that mean little to me now: “awkward silences”, “fake applause”, “Westwood’s still white”, “N Dubz need to be exterminated”, “sleigh ride to hell”, and, suddenly, in large sloppy block letters: “T-PAIN AND YUNG JOC.” Watching them two-step across the stage and hearing the lyrics, “Can I buy you a drank? I got money in the bank!” I got hit with an overwhelming, alien feeling of patriotism. T-Pain for president, bitches.
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