10 Years Of Akala celebrates the British rapper’s decade of music

It’s fitting that in the same year the world celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, Akala is marking 10 years in the music industry.

‘The Black Shakespeare’ is releasing a collection of 20 songs, chosen by his fans from his six studio albums (and a new single), to mark the 10th anniversary of the release of his debut album It’s Not A Rumour.

Metro.co.uk sat down with the acclaimed rapper and wordsmith to talk about his career, music, politics and what’s to come in the next 10 years…

We’re celebrating 10 Years Of Akala. How does your music now compare to when you first started?

I think it might be cliched to say, but I’ve evolved over the last 10 years. When I first started I wanted to be experimental; It’s Not A Rumour had alternative samples, a lot of guitar. I didn’t want to be boxed in, but my environment, upbringing and background influenced the kind of topics that I used and my world view. As I’ve got older and travelled more, listened to over a 1000 albums, read over 100 books and been to well over 50 countries, hopefully that’s evolved some of the core principles that I held on the first album. I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I feel like I’ve got better at my craft.




Talk to me about your new single…

Giants is the indication of where I want to go next. For all these 10 years I haven’t really done any reggae influenced music, probably because reggae is the music I most listened to and was most influenced by.

Did you feel that because you love it so much you would do it a disservice?

No, it felt obvious. I wanted to tread new territory for a while. This felt like a homecoming and my next album will be definitely heavily reggae-influenced, and I think it’s time for that.

Your music always seems to have a narrative. What story are you trying to tell with Giants?

We always discuss a theme and idea and Giants is about recognising musically, culturally, and politically the shoulders that we stand on. The privileges, influences and challenges the people have met before we came along. It’s about ancestors, it’s about the veneration of the people before and how we’re trying to carry the baton forward.

Music seems to be less politically motivated now than it was in the late Seventies/Eighties – Do you think songs can effect change?

I’m not sure it had the effect people think it had even then. It’s not the music that causes the political change. People cause the change. Music can be the soundtrack to it and influencer of it, a consciousness raiser, but the music itself is almost like a provocation. People still need to get out and on the march, organise and campaign, do whatever it is they need to do to affect unjust power. I feel like it’s less fashionable nowadays to become that type of artist.

Akala is set to go on tour later this month

Look at it this way, I’ve not had a single daytime playlist since my first album, yet I’ve been selling 10-20,000 tickets every year in the intervening 10 years… I can’t say categorically that the reason I’m not on the radio is my politics, but there doesn’t seem to be a good indication why an artist like myself doesn’t get radio play, considering that many other UK rappers who, with the greatest of respect, are less successful than me get support.

Do you think that maybe you don’t get played because the people in charge of the playlists are in denial about the issues that you speak on?

Anything that reinforces the dominant narrative is not seen as political. So if you come out and do a song that reinforces materialism, the dominant form of capitalism, that’s quite sexist, celebrates murdering other black people, anything that doesn’t question the dominant powers in the world is seen as ‘radio friendly’ or ‘mainstream’.

Looking at hip hop, there’s an agenda to promote one image of blackness, one particular image of what it is to be an African-American over more diverse images. We have an issue of that here in the UK.

10 quickfire questions What’s your guilty pleasure? UFC Last fiction book you read? A graphic novel by Alejandro Jodorowsky called Metabarons And non-fiction? A whole lot of stuff about the Hatian revolution in preparation for a lecture in Liverpool. What TV do you watch? How To Get Away With Murder Favourite film? Pulp Fiction James Bond or Jason Bourne? Jason Bourne Favourite form of public transport? The Tube Favourite Line? Jubilee Favourite part of London? West London Corbyn or Smith? Corbyn.

There’s a lot of talk of cultural appropriation at the moment, recently with Sean Paul calling out Justin Bieber and Drake over dancehall. In this age of sampling and cross-genres is cultural appropriation a thing in music?



I think it is, it’s about an attitude. Cultural exchange is beautiful and what has always driven human progress. To me there’s nothing wrong with borrowing from anyone’s culture. To me it’s this history, that mainstream white Britain and America seem befuddled about, in America it wasn’t long ago that black people weren’t allowed on the radio, and they taught white black people to ‘talk black’. Eric Clapton, turned around and said a whole load of racist shit but he made his name with music brought over by Caribbean immigrants.

Look at someone like [Tim] Westwood, a posh boy from Norwich who learns to talk some fake Bronx accent, people could see that as a form of cultural appropriation. That’s not to say he hasn’t been supportive about hip hop, he’s been very selective about what he does and doesn’t support. But cultural exchange is beautiful, cultural appropriation is when you deny, delete or obscure the innovators who have paved the way for you.

How would you go about educating people so that they don’t culturally appropriate things?

I’m not that bothered, some people are arseholes and you’ll never be able to defeat that.

Are you optimistic that we can get to the point where things like this or racism no longer exist?

I think sometimes those of us who are for social justice are confused, we think that because the world isn’t perfect or as we want it to be, we think things aren’t improving, and that’s a miscalculation. Apartheid wasn’t supposed to end, and though South Africa still has its issues, that’s one systematic form of injustice that’s been defeated. Formal colonialism in Africa was a system that was supposed to continue for 1000 years, it lasted barely 70.


Society is a negotiation and, to me, being honest about the brutality in the world, which I do in my music, is liberating.

10 Years Of Akala limited edition vinyl and digital album are out September 23, 2016

The 10 Years Of Akala’s UK tour starts on September 23 until October 31, 2016.

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