Ms Dynamite speaks to Newsnight

In September, her debut album beat David Bowie to win the Mercury Music Prize, in October she added three Music of Black Origin awards and in the first week of December she was voted best R&B artist at the Top Of The Pop awards.

Not a bad year for someone who once said her singing sounded like a "cat being thrown off a building".

Just 21, Niami McLean Daley, also known as Ms Dynamite has come through a difficult childhood to write some of the most strikingly political lyrics of recent years.

Kirsty Wark spoke to her for our End of Year interviews.

UNNAMED MAN:
And the winner is - Ms Dynamite.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
Yo I'm that same little girl that grew up next door to you
Went through all the things a teenage girl goes through...

KIRSTY WARK:
Niomi McLean-Daley, as her family knows her, grew up in north London. Her father left home when she was two but the rest of the family stayed close through difficult years. When Niomi was 13, her mother developed cancer, and she took over a lot of the burden of looking after her younger siblings. But she stayed at school and in the end it was fame, not grades, that kept her from taking a place at Sussex University.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
Feel the bad girl bass...
This woman's a legend...

WARK:
The transformation into Ms Dynamite began with her MCing or rapping on pirate radio and at raves, from where she was poached for this record. Within three months, Ms Dynamite was in Miami recording her debut album.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
He never reads with her or takes her out,
That shit's called neglect, you hear...

WARK:
It may be a smoother sound, she's singing, not MCing, but the lyrics aren't less politically charged. The new single, Put Him Out, is a plea to women not to put up with abusive relationships.

When we met, I began by asking her about the award that established her as a star. When you won the Mercury Award, the judges said it was partly because of the strength of your lyrics. Did that come easily to you?

MS DYNAMITE:
Yes. I started writing when I was seven years old, maybe younger, just as a way of expressing myself. I was never, as much as there were a lot of people around me that I could talk to if I wanted to, I didn't want to. I was quite a private person. I don't know, writing became my friend, in a crazy way.

WARK:
In your song, Afraid To Fly, you talk about the pain of losing brothers and sisters. What happened?

MS DYNAMITE:
Basically, growing up. That was probably one of the hardest things that I ever went through, growing up. My mum lost five of my brothers and sisters that were born and died. They all died before the age of one, before they reached the age of one. She had a few miscarriages as well. I think it was probably, yeah, the hardest thing that we ever went through as children, me and my brother and my sister. It's something that I've come to terms with now. I don't necessarily understand it, but it's something I've come to terms with. I just remember my mum saying, "I'm pregnant you're going to have another brother or sister," and being happy going to school, "My mum's having a baby," and then her going to hospital and coming back without my brother. It didn't happen once, it happened five times. It made me a very angry child. It made me extremely angry. You can't really comprehend anything like that. When you're a child, death is something which is hard to understand anyway.

WARK:
When your mother had cancer, the possibility of death was very real for you?

MS DYNAMITE:
The thing is, when my mum got ill, I was really scared. At that point, I was like, "Why don't you just kill me? What else can go wrong?" But because I had spent so many years being angry, when my mum was ill, suddenly, from somewhere, I just gained strength. I think it was really my brothers and sisters. My brother's two years younger than me, even though he acts like he's ten years older than me! He's like my big brother. I don't know, we just got on with it. It was either get on with it, or... There wasn't a choice. I can remember my friend, and his friends, saying, "Wow, you and your sister are so strong. I don't know if I could go through that." I just thought, "Well, you could, because you'd have to. You wouldn't have a choice but to do the washing, the cleaning, the ironing, the cooking. Otherwise what do you do? You live in a pigsty, starve, then you all die."

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
I'm Ms Dy-na-mi-tee I stay blowin' up your stereo
I'm just Ms Dy-na-mi-tee Hear me bussin' on da radio...

MS DYNAMITE:
Thank you to all my sisters out there. Yeah? Let me tell you one thing. You don't need to take off your clothes. You don't need to have a big bumper and big breasts cos I ain't got none of that. You get me? It's about what's in your mind.

WARK:
Sexual politics is a strong part of Niomi's agenda, but she's said she's determined to use her fame to speak out about a number of issues and injustices important to her.

MS DYNAMITE:
I feel that Britain is still an extremely racist country. It's not racist in the sense of verbal or physical abuse. It's not very upfront. It's very institutionalised and swept under the carpet, which I think is the most dangerous type of racism.

WARK:
You're also quite critical of the education system. What was your experience?

MS DYNAMITE:
My experience in school was... ..really quite a negative one. We learnt about black history for like a week, and in that week we learnt that black people were slaves. That's all we learnt about our history. We never learnt about Ancient Egyptians. We never learnt about black scientists. I feel that it's important for everyone to learn everybody's history and everybody's culture. I didn't learn anything about Asian history at all, whereas I learnt for a good nine weeks about the Holocaust. You can't say one's more important than the other, or that one is more valuable in terms of knowing than the other. I think that's the only way we'll ever overcome racism and discrimination, is to learn where we've all come from, what it is to be this person or that type of person.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
The things that you promote. Fighting, violence like you don't want to grow...

WARK:
An abhorrence of violence and its promotion is a recurring theme in Niomi's music. In March this year, Asher D, a member of So Solid Crew, was sentenced to 18 months in a young offenders' institution for possession of a loaded handgun. Niomi had appeared in one of the band's videos. Doesn't she think So Solid Crew have a responsibility not to condone violence?

MS DYNAMITE:
This is a real hard one for me, to be honest, how I see things - I feel that, when I listen to their lyrics, I don't think that they actually condone it. The media make it look like they condone it.

WARK:
But the media didn't put him in prison for a gun offence.

MS DYNAMITE:
No, no, no. There's nothing I can say about that. Even if we sat down and speak to him, he'd tell you, "That was a stupid thing to do". Don't get me wrong, that's different. I'm talking about through their music. What they do is, they express what they go through in day-to-day life, before they got into music, that was their life. That's not their fault. They never asked to be put into those lives, just like I never asked to be given the life I was given before I got into music.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
We leave this world alone Who gives a sh...about the things you own...

WARK:
Billy Bragg said earlier this year that this song, with its critique of materialism and gangsterism, ought to disabuse anyone of the notion that political pop music is dead. How does that square with the received wisdom that young people are all apathetic about politics?

MS DYNAMITE:
I think the word "politics", the connotations that come with the word "politics", to me, as a young person, are basically middle-class, rich, white men, that don't give a damn about what we think. And I don't mean that as in "we" as a black person, but I mean, "we" as young people. If you said to young people, on the other hand, "Are you interested in the way in which the world is run? Are you interested in the fact that this particular thing about education, or this about the NHS, or this about whatever?" They'll tell you, "Yes." I think young people are very interested in the way that the world's run.

WARK:
Why are they failing to capture the attention and the interest of young people?

MS DYNAMITE:
One, because I don't feel that there's anyone in the Cabinet that I think I can relate to, or that relates to me - no-one. I don't think politicians are terrible people, and they just don't give a damn, but what I do think is they don't really listen to young people. They don't listen to how we're affected every day. Even if they do, they don't stick their neck out to do anything.

WARK:
Did you vote last time?

MS DYNAMITE:
I sure did. That's the other thing. When I was younger, when I turned 18, I never voted. The first time I voted was this year just gone. Now, the rest of the years that I haven't voted for, even though I knew it was important, my mum said, "You need to vote!" I did feel, "What's the point? What difference is my vote going to make? No-one listens, no-one cares what we've got to say."

WARK:
If the album is a political manifesto, why don't you become a politician? You've said you'd like to do that.

MS DYNAMITE:
I'd love to! You know, for me, personally, right now, I'm not saying that it's something I wouldn't get into. You never know, you might see me standing as a politician soon! I think, now, I'm enjoying the point of being young and free and able to express myself, and not necessarily, I've got a responsibility to young people, but that's my only responsibility.

MS DYNAMITE LYRICS:
I'm just Ms Dy-na-mi-tee Everybody gotta hear me
You hear me bussin' on the radio...

WARK:
You are used to MCing, or you're going to do a garage album next. Can you still MC easily?

MS DYNAMITE:
Yeah!

WARK:
Give us a bit of MCing.

MS DYNAMITE:
Oh, my goodness me!

WARK:
Do a little, and we'll see if we can use it.

MS DYNAMITE:
All right!
Part of the rhythm I figure all this
If I said I figure this pond dis
Jealous, envious, those without malice, You're on my '80s hit list
Here she comes again, that bad girl lyricist, and I'm pissed that despite the bullshit
That I piss alright, I got the mic, man when I get his tonight
Keep spreading your lies The truth will reveal with words in a universal feel
All the bad mind punks in this industry can S-U-C-K-O-U-T.

WARK:
Fantastic. Niomi, thank you very much.

MS DYNAMITE:
Thank you. Thanks a lot.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.