Paul Morley Showing off ... Tinchy Stryder

The day after he loses out on a Brit to X Factor group JLS Paul Morley meets Tinchy Stryder, one of the new breed of popstars who mean business

A few hours after he lost out on a Brit Award for British Single of 2009 to JLS, which whoever you are has got to hurt, and a few hours after he was due to drop into the Showing off ... studios for some kind of unofficial debrief, Tinchy Stryder finally makes it. As pop-tiny as Kylie, less professionally perky, but more professionally cool, as splendidly in proportion, his t-shirt is so clean that I could spend a few thousand words exploring why this somehow symbolises the new pop world compared to, say, the ones represented by the Move, or the Human League, or Supergrass. Briefly, the buzzing new UK pop scene, as symbolised by this years Brits show, which was epic and silly, hyper and banal, expensive and tacky, self-important and resigned, and la-la lorded over by the lacy, lackadaisacal Lady Gaga with her precision hybrid of shabby performance art, sentimental retro-futurism, pop music structuralism and nit-picking narcissistic nonsense, takes us back to an early 60s world, where pop clothing was very clean, and neat, and tended to be thoughtfully pressed. Somehow even Kasabian, professionally wrecked, deliberately styled as rock outlaws, but ultimately as daring as bank clerks, belong to this era, mocking up the appearance of being legends, walking the walk and holding their instruments in the correct fashion, but likely to be forgotten once the late period, slightly panicky fuss currently being made over pop dies out.

Tinchy is as nicely turned out as you would imagine Adam Faith might have been in 1961 for an interview with the pop columnist of Titbits, with the dinky suit and tie uniform replaced by equally dinky crisp, crumpled jeans and sparkling trainers. This is neither a condemnation or a celebration merely an observation. Everything is changing so fast at the moment as we hurtle into a new set of spaces but at the same time, at least for the moment, nothing is changing. Then again, Adam would probably not have been four and a half hours late for his interview – but then he never lost single of the year to JLS. To be honest, if I'd lost single of the year to JLS, I would disappear for a few weeks, and visit Mariah Carey for some sort of pop career counselling.

There's something else Adam Faith would not have done, at least not in public, which is be covered in brand-enhancing tattoos and blatantly draped in theatrical jewellery. Tinchy is casually but knowingly wearing £16,000 worth of impressively weighty glitter around his neck, possibly borrowed, to be given back a little later before it turns into a Snickers bar. It represents the iPop era putting-on-a-show thing he knows inside out even at the age of 22. He'd returned to his home in the early hours, and slept off his disappointment at losing to JLS, which would drive anyone insane, especially when you just know the world is a sadder place because not only do JLS exist, but that they promote themselves as a music act, and then win Brit Awards. Actually, Tinchy seems more disappointed that he didn't get to meet one of his heroes, Jay Z. He was all set up for an audience, but was dragged away to the ITV2 studios for urgent mindless gossip, and missed his slot. I wonder what on earth he would have said if he had been introduced to the high and mighty Jay Z? How many people must have been introduced to Jay now that there is this new class system in pop – the celebrity culture upper class, those achieving aristocratic iconic status for their ability to mix business with pleasure, music with merchandise, money with money, private planes with electro-beats, and those more upper working class/lower middle class acts that can have hits, appear all over ITV2, be No 1 in international hit parades, but not likely to leave authentic cultural traces. Tinchy would have been introduced as a sparkling new UK pop star, but Jay Z might have been introduced to a dozen already. Tinchy says he would have used his few minutes to tell Jay how much an influence he has been, as musician and business man.

Tinchy still lives with his mum, and if there is a modest well-groomed new pop scene that takes in the likes of Tinchy, Chipmunk, Frankmusik, Ellie, Florence, Little Boots and co, then what links them all is this sense that they can have big hits, and be regular chart acts, and dress up for fun, and be chased from venues by fans, but they all still live with their mums or grandmums. You can be a pop star, and somehow it's an increasingly routine career – the hours are handy and flexible, the perks are attractive, the earning potential quite exciting, but it's just as likely to be a dead end job, a brief blast of glamour, creative excitement, borrowed bling and red carpets, and then its all over, as those behind you in the career queue push you out of the way.

Another difference between the hearthrobs Adam Faith and Tinchy ... well, Adam was white, possibly the whitest pop star of all time, give or take David Sylvian, and what is very new is the sudden break out of young black pop musicians slickly transforming underground energies into unthreatening cheerleading mainstream pop and becoming – in an ITV2 sense – household names. Is this a sign that British pop can receive a late lease of life by allowing through in a less sanitised way than usual homegrown, aggressively non-comformist black music and producing a positive even historic change in the wider cultural climate? Or do these new black pop stars have to be as polite, obedient, muted, neat and tidy as early 60s Adam Faith in order to achieve their success – and hopefully get paid for their endeavours – and therefore essentially compromise their essence, dilute their energy and untangle their influences and make no difference whatsoever to the lopsided, divisive, and repressive ways black and white cultures, lives and perceptions are balanced out in this country?

I ask Tinchy some questions based around these thoughts. He politely answers, and being strategically minded in the way young pop stars now are, he knows all about the dilemmas involved, but it's clear that really he'd much rather be talking to Jay Z than discussing issues that are a little deeper, or a little more boring, than what it's like to be a pop star, and getting a chance to meet Jay Z. He'd probably much rather be talking to Adam Faith – it would have to be his ghost – and asking advice about how to develop clean cut pop success, destined to disappear, into a successful long term business.