The 2022 BRIT awards were held last week at the O2 Arena in London and were hosted by comedian Mo Gilligan and co-hosted by Maya Jama.
The award show aims to celebrate British music every year and consists of awards for categories such as Best Group (Wolf Alice), Album of the Year (Adele, 30), Artist of the Year (Adele) and many more, alongside performances from some of the biggest artists in the world with some of this year's performances including Ed Sheeran and Bring Me the Horizon, Adele, Little Simz and Sam Fender.
It was the young and extremely talented rapper Dave – who also won best Hip-Hop/Grime Act on the night - who stole the show, however, with his performance of his track ‘In the Fire’ from his latest project ‘We’re All Alone in This Together’ to close the night.
The performance began with Dave playing some notes on an acoustic guitar and a female vocalist building up the introduction before the first feature on the track – Fredo – came out to open the track with his verse.
This was then followed by the features on the track Meekz, Ghetts and Giggs before Dave stepped up to perform his verse. For some, this setup may not seem like anything out of the ordinary, artists bring guests out to perform all the time.
But by performing this song and inviting people like Giggs who at one point was struggling to find a venue to perform without police shutting it down, Fredo who has had problems with police and his music in the past also, and Meekz who wears a mask in his music videos to avoid issues with the police surrounding his lyrics, it makes a statement.
Some of these artists are likely to never have been invited to the BRITs before due to the nature of their lyrics, but by having them on stage, performing at this level, and causing a buzz, Dave is showing that the ceiling can be broken through, and the UK rap scene can be taken to levels it has not seen before.
Not only this but the performance itself from the stage set up, to the choir, to everyone's verse, to Dave displaying his talents not only as a rapper but also as a pianist and ending the performance with an electric guitar solo which nobody could have seen coming, this performance was nothing less than iconic from everyone involved from beginning to end.