Ms Dynamite beats garage favourites to Mercury prize

Ms Dynamite, a 21-year-old black rapper from London, won the £20,000 Mercury prize for best album of the year, the music industry's most eclectic award, at a glittering ceremony in London last night.

Ms Dynamite beat bookies' favourite the Streets and the Coral to the award, sponsored by Panasonic, which is regarded as one of the most important in British music.

She is the first solo black female artist to win the prize and has done so with her debut album, A Little Deeper, which has also been nominated for six accolades in the Mobo Award for Black Artists.

At a packed ceremony at the Grosvenor House hotel in London, Ms Dynamite, whose real name is Niomi Daley, looked stunned at the result. Minutes after the announcement, she spoke to BBC Radio One, still clearly astonished at her surprise victory.

She said: "I have never been speechless in my life but I am very, very surprised. I have been feeling all night, 'What am I doing here'. I only started a year ago and to win is mad, mad." She is to donate the prizemoney to charity.

She said that while she did not think her album was "anything amazing at all," she understood its personal and honest lyrical content might have appealed to listeners.

Simon Frith, chairman of the judges, said Ms Dynamite had won because it was a great record but, unusually, any one of six of the 12 nominees could have walked away with the title. "More of the records had more support than usual. There was much less that was negative,'' he said.

"In the end she had a combination of a new kind of voice we haven't heard before, fabulous backing and [something] musically more interesting than you might think.''

He said she had a very clear vision of herself and what she was doing that might enable her to steer clear of the cliches that sometimes beset young black British female artists and might help her succeed further afield.

Her voice was "global urban'' with a strong American influence but could only be British, he said. This year, the prize was notable for a strong black British presence. "That record seemed of the moment,'' Professor Frith said.

Garage act the Streets had been front-runners to win the prize, which is in its 11th year, with Merseyside band the Coral as second favourite.

But the list had attracted particular attention for including both David Bowie, receiving the first nomination of his career at the age of 55, and Joanna MacGregor, a classical pianist who formed her own record label to release musical collaborations with other artists such as former Mercury prize winner Talvin Singh.

When the 12-strong shortlist was announced in July, Simon Frith, a professor of film and media who has chaired the judges since the prize was inaugurated, said it had been a very upbeat year for British and Irish music. "This is the most joyful Mercury shortlist for years, suggesting a sea-change at the heart of British music,'' he said.

Last year's winner was P J Harvey for Stories From The City, Story From the Sea.

The other shortlisted artists this year were: Roots, Manuva, Doves, Beverley Knight, Gemma Hayes, Electric Soft Parade and Guy Barker. Many of them performed at last night's show, which will be screened on BBC2 on Friday and repeated on BBC4, which broadcast it live last night, on Saturday.