I’m interested to know what that would be like. A lot of the people who made that list did go on to massive things. “I won’t lie - it would be awesome to do something that really captured people. As with many performers Kiwanuka is a contradiction - shy but eager to do well. The quasi fame that followed the BBC Sound Of poll a curious thing, he discovered. He’d grown up worshipping Dylan the black musician with whom he identified most closely was another outlier, Jimi Hendrix. In this world of beats and disses, he was in his own mind an outsider.
He started out as a session player around the UK capital, guesting for grime artists Chipmunk and Bashy.
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With a background such as that, it was natural that, skin colour notwithstanding, he might feel slightly out of place in London’s “urban” scene. He studied at Fortisemere School, a well-to-do former grammar school whose alumni include advertising guru Maurice Saatchi, author Toby Young and Turner-winning artist Rachel Whiteread. His was a thoroughly middle class upbringing. Kiwanuka grew up in Muswell Hill, north London, the child of immigrants who had fled to the UK from Idi Amin’s despotic regime in Uganda. “With the first number, I thought it would be cool to make a statement. “I wanted to make a statement, “ says Kiwanuka. If Radiohead were beamed into the body of a conflicted black Londoner with a penchant for slightly moochy acoustic rock, they might come up with something like this. The opening track, for instance, is nearly 12 minutes long elsewhere, Kiwanuka draws on such far-flung influences as Pink Floyd, Scritti Politti and Sam Cooke. It is a smart, often compelling project - but one that demands you approach it on its terms, not yours. I wasn’t writing this one with a fanbase in mind. The first record wasn’t humongous or anything. It takes me a huge amount of time to make music I’m happy with.
“I didn’t feel under huge pressure this time because the first record was so long ago,” he says. If anything, gliding just beneath the radar suits him. As he returns four years on with another solid collection, it is fair to say the world is not holding its breath. Yet though Kiwanuka’s debut album Home Again fared well and was adored by critics, his career never quite caught fire (it stiffed at 15 in the charts here). The poll is a generally reliable barometer of imminent global ubiquity other ‘Sound Of’ picks from around that time include Sam Smith and Adele. In 2012, Kiwanuka placed first in the BBC Sound Of poll of up and coming new talent, ahead of future stars A$AP Rocky and Frank Ocean. If you are around it your entire life it weighs on you.” Does colour really matter? It’s pretty obvious that certain kinds of records are bought by certain kinds of people without any crossover. “All of this stuff has been going around my head since I was a teenager. “I guess it became a statement,” Kiwanuka says of the political-yet-personal lyrics. He channeled this turmoil into ‘Black Man in a White World’, the extraordinary lead single from his second album, Love and Hate.
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