You may well be one of the 11 million people who have seen the video of a fresh-faced, ginger-haired 19-year-old, rapping along with his loop pedal, posted on the YouTube channel SBTV back in 2010. The five-and-a-half minute clip went viral, and the teenager featured — one Ed Sheeran — was a relative unknown at the time, but thanks to this video, Sheeran was catapulted towards the global megastardom of today.
The mastermind behind it all was Jamal Edwards, whose death from “a sudden illness” at the age of 31 was announced this morning. Edwards once said that he wanted to be the grime scene’s “Banksy”. In one sense, he failed in that ambition — despite spending much of his time behind the camera, he soon became personally well known, awarded an MBE in 2014 and rightly regarded as one of London’s great contemporary entrepreneurs — but in another, huge way, he succeeded: like Banksy, Edwards’ impact on UK culture was truly seismic.
