Azealia Banks, Leon Bridges, Benjamin Booker, shortlisted for American Music Prize

Debut albums by Azealia Banks (pictured), Leon Bridges and Benjamin Booker are among the 12 shortlisted for this year’s American Music Prize. The winner receives his or her US$25,000 cash prize on March 2, at a special “celebration event” in Nashville.

The American Music Prize was set up by Scott B. Murphy, who launched the Australian Music Prize in 2005. Unlike the Australian version, only debut albums are eligible to “encourage, discover, reward and promote new music of excellence by U.S. artists.”

Albums have to be released between August 1, 2014 and July 31, 2015 and must have sold at least 1000 copies as measured by Nielsen.

The final 12 are:

Azealia Banks, Broke with Expensive Taste

Banks, Goddess

Benjamin Booker, Benjamin Booker

Bully, Feels Like

Chris Stapleton, Traveller

Ex Hex, Rips

Kamasi Washington, The Epic

Leon Bridges, Coming Home

Mikky Ekko, Time

Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass

Shamir, Ratchet

Tweedy, Sukierae

More than 300 albums were submitted, see the list at. www.americanmusicprize.com. A panel of music industry executives boiled it down to 61 last September.

These included Skrillex & Diplo Present Jack Ü by Skrillex & Diplo, No Life For Me by Wavves x Cloud Nothings, The First Time by Kelsea Ballerini, The Bad Plus Joshua Redman by Joshua Redman & The Bad Plus, Before The World Was Big by Girlpool, Heart On My Sleeve by Mary Lambert, Title by Meghan Trainor, Revenant King by Visigoth, Old Droog by Your Old Droog, Lost On The River by The New Basement Tapes, Goliath by Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil and BEcoming by Stacy Barthe.