Tributes have been pouring in from music industry heavyweights, sports stars and others for SB.TV founder Jamal Edwards following his death at the age of 31.
His manager told the PA news agency that Jamal, who is the son of Loose Women star Brenda Edwards, died on Sunday morning.
On Monday, Brenda shared that Jamal had died after a “sudden illness” in a statement posted on the official Loose Women Twitter account.
Jamal gained fame from setting up new music platform SB.TV – helping to launch a string of UK music careers, including Stormzy, Dave, Ed Sheeran and Jessie J.
He was also an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, a charity headed by the Prince of Wales, and in 2014 he was awarded an MBE for his services to music.
Ashley Banjo, Mo Gilligan, Charlene White, Adam Deacon and the official MOBO Twitter account were among those paying tribute...
Jamal was a teenager when he launched the youth broadcasting and production film channel SB.TV to upload clips he had recorded of his friends performing on the estate where he lived in Acton, west London.
By 2014, he had amassed an estimated fortune of around £8 million.
Speaking to PA after being made an MBE, he said he started SB.TV to give his friends a platform.
He said: “It was a frustration of going to school and everyone talking about ‘how do we get our videos on MTV’.
“YouTube was like a year old. I was like ‘I’ve got a camera for Christmas, I’m going to start filming people and uploading it’.
“Everyone was looking at me like ‘what are you doing, like you can compete with these major corporations’, but I think I was early enough to believe that I could make a change.”
In the same interview, he described his working relationship with musicians as “symbiotic”.
“50% is the talent and 50% is the platform,” he said.
“I try to focus on people that haven’t got the platform. As well as getting a really well-known artist I want to get the up-and-coming ones as well.”