Mobo Awards 2026: Little Simz and Olivia Dean lead nominations - follow

for the first time Rap legend Slick Rick is set to take home the lifetime achievement award - he tells the BBC how he developed his sing-song rap style Edited by Matt Spivey and Rachel Flynn, with Mark Savage, Naomi Clarke, Caleb McNeil and Lola Schroer at the awards The dance floor at The Hacienda in 1988 - including Bez from the Happy Mondays In the late 1980s and early 90s, Manchester was a city transformed by music.

For a brief but powerful period, music, drugs and fashion all intertwined to make the city - dubbed Madchester - the place to be. The second summer of love - as it became known - shone brightly for several years, from the Hacienda to Spike Island, before burning out...

blazing a trail for Britpop and Oasis. Now, 35 years on, Manchester appears to be having another (slightly different type of) moment, musically-speaking, as many artists, fans and industry executives once again hit the north. Last month, the city played host to the Brit Awards - where the newly nicknamed Olivia Deansgate swept the board - taking the event out of London for the first time in its near 50-year history.

And tonight, the new Co-op arena - which has already been booked for the Brits again for next year - will also stage the Mobo Awards for the first time. BBC's Mark Savage has just caught up with Radio 5 , alongside Ezra Collective's Femi Koleoso. Femi, whose group is up for a nomination in best jazz act and album of the year, says he is "very grateful" and "very honoured".

It's not the band's first nod - they won best jazz act in 2022 and 2024, and album of the year in 2023. Femi says the band give the trophies to their manager as "you can't split a trophy five ways". Last month, she scooped four awards at the Brits, including album of the year.

A couple of weeks earlier, she’d been crowned best new artist at the Grammys. Tonight, she’s up for another four awards at the Mobos and it’d be inconceivable for her to leave empty-handed. Behind all that success is her second album, The Art Of Loving, a smooth and elegant collection of pop songs that draw on the lineage of Amy Winehouse, Sade, Carole King and Lauryn Hill.