Speech Debelle has won the 2009 Mercury Music Prize for debut album Speech Therapy.

The rapper fended off competition from bookmakers' favourite Florence And The Machine as well as other hotly tipped records from the likes of La Roux, Kasabian and The Horrors to take home the the £20,000 prize.

She claimed her win proved "if you believe in something and you think you can do it, you can".

Talking after she was handed the prize, she said: "I feel so good, it feels better than I imagined."

"There's a lot of music that sounds the same, all day on the radio.

"Hopefully people will hear this album and realise they don't have to make music that sounds the same - they can make music that sounds good."

It wasn't Flo! Hooray! It went to an independent! Hooray! Debelle sounds like a lovely lass! Hooray! Perhaps she'll spend the wallah on writing some decent songs...