In 2011’s Fire In The Booth Part 1, British indie rapper and poet Kingslee James Daley a.k.a. Akala lays down a world-weary challenge to his listeners with the line “when the world’s this f***ed up, lethargy’s a crime.” The BAFTA and MOBO Award winner — who will be performing at the Exchange showcase in Mumbai this week as part of a three city India tour — has carved out a reputation as one of Britain’s most politically incisive rappers since breaking through with his 2006 debut album It’s Not A Rumour. In 2009, Akala launched the The Hip-hop Shakespeare Company, 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. Over five albums and a series of articles and public lectures, Akala has offered insightful critiques of issues including racism, xenophobia, class conflict and Western intervention in the Middle East. Eleven years later, as we grapple with Donald Trump, Brexit and the Syrian crisis, it’s hard not to wonder if he feels like he’s been banging his head against a wall. Fighting back “I was cynical to begin with, so that’s no problem,” he laughs over a Skype call from Jamaica, where he’s working on a book. “Yeah, there’s always setbacks and things can get worse, but they’d be even worse if there’s no resistance. I think a lot of the problems facing humanity might never get solved but that won’t stop people resisting and nor should it,” says the musician. Akala’s music draws its lineage from an old tradition of militant hip-hop and black poetry that uses art as a medium of political education — whether it’s the revolutionary black nationalism of the Last Poets, the insurrectionist socialism of Dead Prez or the social commentary of ‘Master Teacher’ KRS-One. But sometime in the 90s, the ideal of rap as knowledge was replaced by rap as a form of nihilist materialism, exemplified by the violent misogyny and glorified hedonism of Eminem and Dr. Dre. “Part of the problem is that the music industry is not controlled, owned or distributed by people making the music, and that’s even more pronounced in hip-hop in America, with all its conflicts of class and race,” says Akala. “So hip-hop increasingly took on the persona and the tastes of the people that run the music industry rather than what the people in the communities that created hip-hop may have wanted. But there’s still some very successful artists, people like Kendrick Lamar and J Cole, who are the biggest rappers in the world and they both try to deal with issues.” Akala sees this as part of a larger social trend to ignore or downplay the intellectual side of black culture, in Britain in particular and Western society in general. Black people may be producing immense works of art or doing groundbreaking work at Oxford and Cambridge, but none of that puts even a small dent in the prevailing stereotypes of black people as violent or anti-education. “Within the construct of Western society, a lot of the way in which they’ve come to understand and imagine themselves and their identity, has to do with all sorts of theories about race and in particular, the European superiority to black Africans.” What concerns the rapper is fighting against deeply entrenched prejudice. “Part of the process of making that superiority stick was that every single pre-colonial civilisation they’d found in Africa, you’d have some non-African historian studying and explaining them. The legacy of this is racism’s enduring myth that black people are anti-education or worse, stupid. That still hasn’t left us. I think for mainstream culture, despite the history of black people fighting and dying for education in places like America and South America, it’s very difficult for them to accept and go against that kind of ingrained prejudice.” Politics of colonialism Just how ingrained many of these colonial ideas are in the British public consciousness was made starkly clear during and after the Brexit campaign, with pro-Leave campaigners making allusions of a return to the glory days of colonial — and by extension white — Great Britain and weaving fantasies of a revived Commonwealth as a happy, free-trade loving family. Some officials in the U.K. government even dubbed these plans ‘Empire 2.0’. “Most people in Britain are completely unaware, or they’ve attained the mental acrobatics to allow people to think the British Empire was just when it starved 25-35 million people in India alone,” says Akala. “You just take what the Empire did in India and that would be enough to make it comparable to the worst empires in human history in terms of global casualties, brutality and the fascistic nature of Malthusian economics,” says the rapper. This tour is the rapper’s second visit to India. The last time around, he was particularly intrigued by India’s heavy metal scene. This time, he’s planning on getting to know the Indian hip-hop scene, and even collaborate with a desi hip-hop artist. “I’m excited,” he says about his upcoming India shows. “I’m going to perform a selection of the 10-year set [from his tenth anniversary tour and CD compilation last year] so that people can get a sense of the musical journey over the last decade.” Akala will be performing at The Summer House Café, Lower Parel, today from 9 p.m. onwards. Entry is free.

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