Akala

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, published in 2018, sets Akala's own upbringing in Kentish Town against the longer history of British empire, and argues that race in Britain cannot be read apart from class. It sold well enough to reach the Sunday Times chart and was cited for the Jhalak Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Akala was born Kingslee James McLean Daley in 1983, to a Jamaican father and a Scottish mother, and is the younger brother of the singer Ms. Dynamite. His reputation was made first in music: he took the 2006 MOBO award for best hip hop act, around the debut album It's Not a Rumour, and Freedom Lasso followed in 2007. In 2009 he set up the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company, which works with young people on the common ground between rap lyric and Elizabethan verse. The University of Brighton awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2018.