Akala | |
|---|---|
 Akala in 2014 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Kingslee James McLean Daley |
| Born | (1983-12-01)1 December 1983 (age 41)[1] Crawley,West Sussex, England[1] |
| Origin | Kentish Town, London, England |
| Genres | British hip hop |
| Occupation(s) | Rapper, writer and activist |
| Years active | 2004–present |
| Labels | Immovable Ltd (Illa State Records) |
| Website | akalamusic |
Kingslee James McLean Daley (born 1 December 1983),[1] known professionally asAkala, is a British rapper, writer and activist. In 2006, he was voted the Best Hip Hop Act at theMOBO Awards[2] and has been included on the annualPowerlist of the 100 most influential Black British people in the UK, most recently making the2021 edition.[3][4]
Daley was born inCrawley,West Sussex,[1] in 1983 to aScottish mother andJamaican father who separated before he was born, and grew up with his mother inKentish Town, north London.[5][6] He has recalled the day he realised that his mother was white,[7] and was embarrassed by her whiteness.[8] His mother had educated him about black history and introduced him to radical black thinkers, yet there would always remain a racial dimension to those relationships.[9] Daley's older sister is rapperMs. Dynamite.
His stepfather was a stage manager at theHackney Empire theatre, and he often visited it before his teens.[10] His mother enrolled him in a pan-African Saturday school, about which he states "I benefited massively from a specifically black community-led self-education tradition that we don't talk about very much because it doesn't fit with the image [of black families]".[11] When accepting honorary degrees, he thanked "the entire Caribbean pan-African community that helped me through school and encouraged an intellectual curiosity and self development from a very young age."[12]
At age six, Daley's state primary school put him in a special needs group for pupils with learning difficulties and English as a second language.[10] He attendedAcland Burghley School for secondary education. Daley saw a friend attacked with a meat cleaver to the skull when he was 12, and carried a knife himself for a period.[11] He went on to achieve tenGCSEs and took maths a year early. He has said he "was in the top 1 per cent of GCSEs in the country. [I] got 100 per cent in [my] English exam."[11] As a teenager, Daley focused on football, being on the schoolboy books of bothWest Ham United andAFC Wimbledon, and dropped out of college.[10] He is a fan ofArsenal.[13] Daley did not attend university, but has said he often envies those who do.[14]
Daley has two honorary degrees in recognition of his educational work. On 23 June 2018, he received an honorary doctorate fromOxford Brookes University as a Doctor of Art.[15] On 31 July 2018, he received an honorary degree fromBrighton University.[16]
Daley got his stage name fromAcala, aBuddhist term for "immovable",[17] and started releasing music in 2003 from his own independent music label, Illa State Records. He released his first mixtape,The War Mixtape, in 2004.[18]
In 2006, he released his first album,It's Not a Rumour. This proved to be his breakthrough album, containing the single "Shakespeare" (a reference to his self-proclaimed title "The Black Shakespeare") which made theBBC Radio 1 playlist.[19] His work was recognised with theMOBO Award for Best Hip Hop Act.[20] Additionally in 2006, a mixtape,A Little Darker, was released under the name "Illa State", featuring Akala and his sister,Ms. Dynamite, as well as cameo appearances by many other artists.[21]
Daley appeared for a live session onBBC Radio 1Xtra where he was challenged to come up with a rap containing as many Shakespeare play titles as he could manage, he wrote and performed a minute-long rap containing 27 different Shakespeare play titles in under half an hour and later recorded these lyrics in the studio and turned it into the single "Comedy Tragedy History".[22]
In 2007, Daley released his second album,Freedom Lasso, containing the "Comedy Tragedy History" track. The song "Love in my Eyes" heavily sampledSiouxsie and the Banshees' song "Love in a void" with the voice ofSiouxsie Sioux.[23] In 2008,The War Mixtape Vol. 2 was released, along with an EP of acoustic remixes.[24]
Daley's third studio album,DoubleThink, was released in 2010, and holds a strong theme ofGeorge Orwell's popular novelNineteen Eighty-Four.[25]DoubleThink contains tracks such as "Find No Enemy" and "Yours and My Children" detailing some of the sights he saw on his trip to Brazil.[26] In November 2010, Daley headlined a live performance at theBritish Library, to launch the "Evolving English" exhibition and featured performances by British poetZena Edwards, comedianDoc Brown and British rapperLowkey which also included Daley taking part in a hip hop panel discussion alongsideSaul Williams, U.S professorMK Asante and Lowkey.[27][28] Daley appeared onCharlie Sloth's show onRadio 1Xtra on 18 July 2011, performing "Fire in the Booth", and after the great reception it received he returned again in May 2012 and provided "Part 2".[29]
In May 2012, Daley released a two-part mixtape,Knowledge Is Power, containing "Fire in the Booth", and followed the release with a promotional tour in the autumn of 2012.[citation needed] In March 2013, Daley announced via his social media feeds that his fourth album would be released in May 2013, pushing back the future EPThe Ruin of Empires to later in 2013.[citation needed] His fourth album,The Thieves Banquet, was released on 27 May 2013, including the songs "Malcolm Said It", "Maangamizi" and "Lose Myself" (feat. Josh Osho).[30]
In 2007, Daley was the first hip hop artist to perform his own headline concert inVietnam.[31] He has performed at various U.K. festivals, includingV Festival,Wireless,Glastonbury,Reading and Leeds Festivals,Parklife,Secret Garden Party andIsle of Wight, and has supported artists such asChristina Aguilera,[32]MIA,[33]Richard Ashcroft,[34]Audiobullys,[35]DJ Shadow,[36]The Gotan Project[37] andScratch Perverts on their U.K/European tours.[38]
In 2008, Daley featured at theSouth by Southwest music festival inTexas[39] and in 2010 he toured the UK withNas andDamian Marley on the "Distant Relatives" tour, which included the British rapperTy.[40]
In November 2010, Daley embarked on his own headline tour of the UK, with 20 dates overall.[41] He was present at the "One Love:No Borders Hip Hop" event held inBirmingham, England in April 2011, with Iron Braydz from London,Lowkey, Logic and other up-and-coming UK artists.[42] In August 2012, he performed at theOutlook Festival[43] and in November 2012, he performed at the second edition of NH7 Weekender music festival in Pune,India.[44]
In May 2018, Daley publishedNatives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. The book is part biography, and part polemic on race and class. The overall ideological framework of the book is a pragmatic, socialist-oriented Pan-Africanism that claims to seek the liberation of all humanity from oppression and exploitation. At the same time, Daley highlights what he believes are shared problems faced by African communities worldwide in what he describes as a global system of imperialism.[45]
Daley attributes his escape from poverty not to personal exceptionalism but to the vagaries and chaotic injustice of race, class and privilege.[46] Daley asserts that Britain is not a meritocracy where the barriers of race and class can be simply overcome through hard work and perseverance. He explains his success as the absurd and unexpected consequence of an unequal system that allows the rise of a few while leaving behind the many, no matter how brilliant they are. He claims several times in the book that some of his friends could have been academics or scientists if the obstacles of what he terms 'structural racism' and 'class oppression' had not been there.[47]
In 2016[48] Akala published a graphic novel/comic book called Visions. Akala's own comic deals with his interests, and references. It is a semi-autobiographical journey into magical realism, which begins with him smashing a television with a teapot, then takes us through altered states of consciousness, reincarnation, hallucinations, and themes of indigenous spiritualities and ancestral memory.
In June 2016, Daley supportedLabour Party leaderJeremy Corbyn after mass resignations from his shadow cabinet and aleadership challenge. Hetweeted: "The way these dickhead Labour MP's [sic] are snaking @jeremycorbyn eediat ting."[49]
In May 2017, he endorsed Corbyn in the2017 UK general election. He wrote inThe Guardian: "So why will I be voting now? Jeremy Corbyn. It's not that I am naïve enough to believe that one man (who is, of course, powerless without the people that support him) can fundamentally alter the nature of British politics, or that I think that if Labour wins that the UK will suddenly reflect his personal political convictions, or even that I believe that the prime minister actually runs the country. However, for the first time in my adult life, and perhaps for the first time in British history, someone I would consider to be a fundamentally decent human being has a chance of being elected."[50]
In November 2019, along with 34 other musicians, Daley signed a letter endorsing Corbyn in the2019 UK general election with a call to end austerity.[51][52]
Daley acknowledges institutionalised racism: "My analysis of institutionalised racism is not 'oh, this is an excuse to fail' – quite the opposite. The earlier you're aware of the hurdles, the easier they are to jump over."[11]
Daley has given guest lectures at East 15 Acting School,University of Essex,Manchester Metropolitan University,[53]Sydney University,[54]Sheffield Hallam University,[55]Cardiff University, and theInternational Slavery Museum,[56] as well as a workshop on songwriting at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies.[57] He has also spoken at theOxford Union.[58] He has also been involved in campaigns to "decolonise" the curriculum including giving a talk at theUniversity of Leicester.[59]
Founded in 2009 by Daley, The Hip-hop Shakespeare Company (THSC) is a music theatre production company aimed at exploring the social, cultural and linguistic parallels between the works of William Shakespeare and that of modern day hip-hop artists.
| Album Information |
|---|
It's Not a Rumour
|
Freedom Lasso
|
DoubleThink
|
The Thieves Banquet
|
Knowledge Is Power II[60]
|
| Album Information |
|---|
10 Years of Akala[61]
|
| EP Information |
|---|
Acoustic Remixes - EP[62]
|
Visions - EP[63]
|
| Mixtape Information |
|---|
The War Mixtape
|
A Little Darker (withMs. Dynamite)
|
The War Mixtape Vol. 2
|
Knowledge Is Power Volume 1
|
He told graduates: "I can't lie, I often envy those of you who do get to go, people like you … who are about to remake the world, or at least this country. That's how serious these four years are. What will you do with the time you spent here and the education you have been privileged to be loaned by the rest of society?
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
