The musician is also the youngest recipient ever, coming just five years after posting his lo-fi breakout tracks “Break it Off” and “Pain” on TikTok.

Written in the middle of the night in her room at university, the song is rooted in the sounds of UK garage and drum and bass, for which she won the BBC’s Sound of 2022 award.

Since then, she has racked up more than 1 billion streams and scored a huge global hit with 2023’s Boys A Liar. 2. Last year’s punchy, sample-packed mixtape, Fancy That, became her first Top 10 album and earned her a Mercury Prize nomination.

Unusually, her unique production style, filled with driving breakbeats and sugar-stranded melodies, is completely self-taught.

“When I was 17, I was going to an all-girls school and I had a friend who was a singer, and she wanted someone to produce her, and I thought, ‘Let’s try it,'” she recalls.

She learned the basics by watching YouTube tutorials and found inspiration from female artists like Nia Archives, Tinashe, and WondaGurl, who “made me feel like it was possible.”

Without the resources to hire a recording studio, she used whatever equipment she had on hand.

“Literally, I didn’t have a mic, but I was playing a karaoke game on my Nintendo Wii, so they gave me a mic along with the game. So I thought, ‘Well, I have a USB connection, so maybe it could work if I plugged it in.'”

“There was a lot of trial and error.”

Even now, she records many of her vocals at home, placing a sock over the microphone to prevent pops and sibilance.

“You can do anything from your bedroom. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”