It was a little under a decade ago that I found myself sitting in a cramped flat off Edinburgh’s Leith Walk drinking tea and eating biscuits with Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham Hastings. Hearing how they had met at an under-16s hip-hop night in the capital as rap-loving 14-year-olds and talking about the trials and tribulations which had brought them together from different parts of the city – and, in the case of Massaquoi, from the midst of the Liberian Civil War which killed an estimated 200,000 people, his uncle included.

 “We couldn’t have occurred anywhere else,” Hastings told me at the time. “We couldn’t occur again anyway because the coincidence of three people like us meeting up is never ever going to happen. Why no-one else sounds like us is because of that.”

As the musical trio Young Fathers they had already tasted critical acclaim in Scotland thanks to two mixtapes, the cutely titled Tape One and Tape Two. But they had recently released their debut album proper on highly regarded independent label Big Dada, a raucous, free-wheeling, genre-defying set of songs they titled Dead. It’s why I was there to speak to them about it. A few days after we met it won the Scottish Album of the Year Award, beating off competition from the likes of Biffy Clyro, Mogwai and Edwyn Collins.

Then, two months later the trio really hit the headlines. Dead won them the 2014 Mercury Music Prize, to the amazement of some, the consternation of a few – Scottish hip-hop? – and the delight of anyone with ears who recognised untrammelled genius when it strode onstage in trench-coats and tartan breeks, glowering and prowling and kicking up a sonic storm.

Put simply, nothing looked or sounded quite like Young Fathers. It was true then and it’s still the case today. Check out footage of their barnstorming appearance at the recent Glastonbury festival for proof of that. When they appeared at last weekend’s Latitude Festival, the BBC’s music critic Mark Savage was even moved to ask: “Are Young Fathers the UK’s most thrilling live band.” Few who have seen them would doubt it.

READ MORE: YOUNG FATHER NOMINATED FOR 2023 MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE

But that’s not to say there haven’t been naysayers and boo boys along the way. After the 2014 Mercury win, there were gleeful stories about how few copies Dead had sold – around 2000 at the point the band scooped the £20,000 prize – and you didn’t have to look far to see the names of previous winners who had failed to capitalise on their success being invoked. Acts such as Speech Debelle, say, or Ms. Dynamite. Critical eyebrows were raised too at the title of Dead’s follow-up, White Men Are Black Men Too. What could the band mean by that?

And what did Scotland make of Young Fathers? Well, the trio found a steadfast champion in Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) director Fergus Linehan when he took over the show in 2015. He was evangelical about the band – I know, he told me – and programmed them in the 2016 EIF, a brave step for a festival better known for operas and string quartets.

Film director Danny Boyle is another fan. Young Fathers are all over the soundtrack for T2: Trainspotting. And people in the capital still talk about a 2015 performance at Central Halls in Tollcross, when Young Fathers were hosted by the innovative Neu! Reekie! organisation and teamed with the late, great Andrew Weatherall of Screamadelica fame.

The Herald: The cover designs for Young Fathers albums Heavy Heavy (left) and Cocoa SugarThe cover designs for Young Fathers albums Heavy Heavy (left) and Cocoa Sugar (Image: Ninja Tune)

More recently, two sold-out nights at Glasgow’s Barrowland attest to the band’s appeal in their homeland. That was on a tour in support of Heavy Heavy, the follow-up to third studio album Cocoa Sugar and the one for which Young Fathers have now received a second Mercury Music Prize nomination.

But what makes the band unique in British music makes them difficult to fold into the story of Scottish rock and pop. They sit uneasily in it, despite the acclaim. It doesn’t help that they can be as strident and opinionated in their actions, statements and pronouncements as they are in their music. Their support for refugees is understandably vociferous but they also have ruffled feathers in the past with their backing for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to put political and economic pressure on Israel.

To date, Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand are the only other Scottish acts to have won British music’s most prestigious prize, and yet Young Fathers still sit well below them in the pantheon. Should they win the Mercury Music Prize for a second time – something only ever achieved by another original talent, PJ Harvey – they would surely surpass both. Don’t bet against it happening: this trio of restless, inventive iconoclasts just might be Scotland’s best and most successful band.