We’re already drowning in US pop culture. Surely there’s a case for giving our homegrown talent a chance to compete

• Elijah is a DJ and writer specialising in Black British culture and electronic music

It’s been five years since Stormzy headlined Glastonbury, a defining moment in Black British music history. But if you listen to stations like Capital Xtra, Kiss and BBC Radio 1Xtra, they still centre American hip-hop and R&B – a staggering amount of it from the early 2000s – such as 50 Cent, Ja Rule and Chris Brown. It’s particularly vexing that BBC Radio 1Xtra, which uses “Amplifying Black music and culture” as its tagline, still doesn’t prioritise Black British artists in its daytime programming. Homegrown music is reserved for the night-time slots, when fewer people are listening. Why are we paying for a station that doesn’t focus on representing our music?

It’s no secret that the publicly funded station faces heavy competition from commercial rival Capital Xtra, but the answer can’t be to copy its tired formula of “hits” all day and night. Last week I listened to 1Xtra and Capital Xtra, and they both played Joe Budden’s Pump It Up, a US rap hit from 2003, within minutes of each other in the middle of the afternoon. It’s as if our airwaves are frozen in time, with no benefit to our artists or ecosystem.

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© Photograph: Jo Hale/Redferns

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© Photograph: Jo Hale/Redferns

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