Lyricist Award Sponsored by PRS For Music
PRS for Music is a world-leading music collective management organisation representing the rights of more than 165,000 talented songwriters, composers and music publishers around the globe. Headquartered in the UK, it works diligently on behalf of its members to grow and protect the value of their rights. With a focus on innovation and integrity, PRS for Music is redefining the global standard for music royalties to ensure creators are paid whenever their musical compositions and songs are streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed and played in public. In 2022, PRS for Music collected £964m and paid out £836.2m in royalties. www.prsformusic.com
For outstanding lyrics in an original track by an artist or group involved in a Youth Music-funded project.
WINNER
TL - Time Will Tell
Rap Club Productions C.I.C, London
One of TL's best friends, Damzy, was murdered in summer 2021. He had just finished his GCSEs (and ended up getting higher grades than expected). However, he had gotten mixed up with dangerous people, a big part being through a girl he was going out with. "Time Will Tell" expresses TL's emotions around this, how the events went down and how it still affects him to this day. It is in part a way for him to keep memory of his friend alive. It uses TL's hard hitting raw wordplay, (internal) rhymes and range of intelligent flows. It is a deeply emotional song that has not yet been released. The raw emotional power behind this song really stands out.
J4 - Little Bro
Romsey Mill, East of England
J4 worked on this song for several months to perfect the message he wanted to portray. The song is a combination of various stories of young people he knows and sees as his little brother. The stories it tells hit deep and show the real consequences of young people’s actions.
Qazi & Qazi - Forward
Youth Music NextGen Fund, West Midlands
Inspired by a short news documentary about the struggles of a recently orphaned child from a war-torn country, the story moved Qazi & Qazi so deeply that they wrote a song about it. They say: "We wrote 'Forward' ahead of extremely difficult circumstances for us, and little did we know that this song would serve itself as our beacon of light, and strength in finding our reason to go 'forward', together, and continue on our path to make and release music, despite all odds.
“This song is the first song we ever produced by ourselves, it is the inspiration and seed from which our artistry and music has bloomed.
“We wrote, recorded, produced and mixed this entire song at home, from our little bedroom studio. All aspects of our recordings are captured live, in their element. We perform all vocals together, live, in one take, and build production with harmonies and instrumentation.”