Who is Akala?
Kingslee James McLean Daley (born 1 December 1983), better known by the stage name Akala, is a British rapper, journalist, author, poet, political activist and public intellectual.Originally from Kentish Town, London he is the younger brother of rapper/vocalist Ms. Dynamite. In 2006, he was voted the Best Hip Hop Act at the MOBO Awards. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Brighton in 2018. Daley was born in Crawley, West Sussex, in 1983 to a Scottish mother and Jamaican father, and grew up in Kentish Town, London.He chose the stagename Akala, a Buddhist term for "Immovable", and started releasing music in 2003 from his own independent music label, Illa State Records. He released his first mixtape, entitled The War Mixtape, in 2004.
In June 2016, Akala supported Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn after mass resignations from his cabinet and a leadership challenge. He tweeted: "The way these dickhead Labor MP's are snaking @jeremycorbyn eediat ting."
In May 2017, he endorsed Corbyn in the 2017 UK general election. He wrote in The Guardian: "So why will I be voting now? Jeremy Corbyn. It's not that I am naive 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.
Akala has given guest lectures at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, Manchester Metropolitan University, Sydney University, Sheffield Hallam University, Cardiff University, and the International Slavery Museum,as well as a workshop on songwriting at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He has also spoken at the Oxford Union.[14]. He has also been involved in campaigns to 'decolonise' the curriculum including giving a talk at the University of Leicester.
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