When Emeli Sandé was a schoolgirl in Alford, Aberdeenshire, Thursday nights would find her glued to Radio 1.

The reason? Trevor Nelson’s R’n’B showcase, Rhythm Nation. “That’s where I heard all this new music that was happening in London,” she says. “That was kind of like my connection to the rest of the world.”

Fast forward a decade and Sandé is one of the people making that new music, part of a wave of young artists whose work is lumped under the catch-all term “urban” and whose efforts will be recognised in Glasgow on Wednesday when the Music Of Black Origin (MOBO) Awards visit the SECC for the second time in three years.

For the 24-year-old it will be a triumphant return and a validation of sorts. It’s not long since she left the city for London, swapping the relative safety of a medical degree at Glasgow University for the notoriously insecure world of the music industry. She doesn’t rule out a return to doctoring one day, but for the time being there are one or two more pressing concerns.

There’s the MOBOs themselves, for a start. Sandé is nominated in the Best Newcomer category where she faces stiff competition from (among others) Jessie J, Ed Sheeran and Loick Essien. As well as waiting anxiously in the VIP section as the envelopes are opened, she’ll be performing her first single, Heaven, at the awards – it reached number two in the charts in August – and also joining Hackney rapper Professor Green for a run-through of his new single, Read All About It. With a live TV audience watching on BBC Three, it will be the most important gig of Sandé’s career to date.

Read All About It is the Scot’s second collaboration with Professor Green. The first featured on his acclaimed 2010 debut album Alive Till I’m Dead. Sandé has also worked with other stars of the urban scene like Tinie Tempah (on Let Go), Chipmunk (on 2009’s top 10 hit Diamond Ring, which she performed at the 2009 MOBOs) and Wiley, the godfather of grime.

Criminally underappreciated still, it was Wiley who mentored Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder and who sculpted the grime sound out of the remains of the UK garage scene a decade ago, first with his Roll Deep crew and later as a solo artist. “He is quite elusive,” laughs Sandé, who featured on his 2010 hit Never Be Your Woman. “I still haven’t even met him. We did everything via emails and phone calls.” She may have a chance to make his acquaintance this week – the rapper is nominated in the Best Video and Best Hip Hop/Grime Act categories.

Sandé is too polite to admit it, but it’s obvious to most commentators that the MOBOs now rival the Brits in terms of stature: there will be little on show at the SECC which couldn’t equally grace the Brits stage or even the Barclaycard Mercury Prize shortlist. In fact three of this year’s MOBO nominees – Tinie Tempah, Katy B and Adele – did just that when they made the Mercury’s 2011 list. It’s hard to remember a time when British rock and indie music looked so pallid and reactionary next to its bratty, lyric-spitting, speaker-wobbling, chart-topping counterpart in the black music scene. With grime and dubstep now dominating the charts and moving ever further into the British pop mainstream, it’s a good time to be an urban artist.

“When I first did the song with Chipmunk it was the beginning of that movement,” says Sandé. “Rap music was coming more into the pop world, you could get a top 10 hit with a rap song, so I feel really quite privileged to have been involved in that. Everything’s so very healthy at the moment. Whatever you want to call it, urban music or whatever, doors have been opened now.”

Win or lose on Wednesday, doors are certainly opening for Sandé and look likely to stay open for some time. She arrives in Glasgow fresh from a week spent writing and recording with Alicia Keys in New York – “It’s been amazing,” she says, “really inspiring” – and a fortnight ago she made a spellbinding appearance on Later With Jools Holland. Her performance wasn’t as energetic as Janelle Monae’s scene-stealing turn a year earlier, but it’s likely to have a similarly energising effect on a public profile which is already rising fast. Among the songs she performed was a stripped-back version of Heaven featuring just guitar and cello.

Mere days after the Professor Green single hits the shops, Susan Boyle’s third album, Someone To Watch Over Me, is released. The two artists may seem worlds apart, but they have Sandé in common: sitting alongside covers of songs by Joni Mitchell, Depeche Mode and George and Ira Gershwin on Someone To Watch Over Me is a song written for Boyle by Sandé at the personal request of Simon Cowell, a longtime fan. It’s one of only two new compositions on the album.

“It’s a great album to be a part of,” she says. “I haven’t heard the song with Susan singing it yet either, so I’m looking forward to that. I’m really excited. Simon Cowell’s such a big guy in the industry and he knows songs. He knows about melodies and lyrics so to have him champion me was fantastic. I was really flattered.”

But really all that’s just the entree. The main course is due early next year when Sandé’s debut album, Our Version Of Events, is finally released and she drops the collaborator tag and steps out as a solo artist in her own right.

“I haven’t actually finished the record yet,” she laughs. “I think the writing will be finished soon but we need to put it all together and add the finishing touches, so I think I’ll just write right up to the wire. Some of the tracks have been completed but there’s still work to be done.”

It’s being worked on and recorded in various studios in London and New York, and among her helpmates is friend and producer Naughty Boy. Real name Shahid Khan, he launched his music career with a £44,000 win on Deal Or No Deal and co-wrote Chipmunk’s hit Diamond Rings and Wiley’s Never Be Your Woman with Sandé. “He’s my main writing guy, so working with him is always good fun and really inspirational. We have good chemistry, I think.”

Ahead of the album’s release there’s a November tour which includes three Scottish dates. The last is at Aberdeen Music Hall which, as well as bringing Sandé some home-cooking for a night or two, returns her to the place where her musical journey began – in the company of her Zambian father and the great Nina Simone, her earliest and still her most powerful influence, and with the east-coast wind whipping round her ankles.

“My dad is very musical. He has a good ear for melodies and harmonies though he never had any musical training. But he introduced me to some great music,” she says. “I remember he played me one tune by Nina Simone and I just thought ‘Wow, what is this?’ I remember it quite vividly. I just fell in love with it. It was Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead) [written about the assassination of Martin Luther King]. I was at Aberdeen beach and he played it in the car.”

One day, there may be a plaque there. Before then, however, Emeli Sandé has a few more songs she’d like us to hear.

The MOBO Awards take place at the SECC on Wednesday and are screened live on BBC Three. Our Version Of Events is released next year