Young Fathers take it in their stride

By Hazel Sheffield

When Young Fathers, a hip-hop trio from Edinburgh, won the Mercury prize last night, they kept their speech short. “Thank you, thank you. We love you, we love you all,” Alloysious Massaquoi told the audience at the Roundhouse in London. They weren’t much more expansive in front of the press afterwards. "We'll take it in our stride," Graham Hastings said drily. "We always wanted to make something bigger than the city we were living in."

They've learnt to be sceptical about hype. Massaquoi, Hastings and the third member, Kayus Bankole, met as teenagers at an under-16s hip-hop night in Edinburgh, by which time life had already furnished them with visions beyond the city and, as their name suggests, wisdom beyond their years. Hastings grew up on Edinburgh's Drylaw estate, Massaquoi moved from Liberia when he was four, and while Bankole was born in Edinburgh he lived in Maryland and Nigeria before moving back as a teenager. Their prize-winning album, “Dead”, mashes hip-hop rage and sweet-voiced soul in African and Scottish accents, all set against pounding electronic beats.