Kanya King, a British businesswoman who founded the MOBO Awards, is dead.
Kanya King reportedly died after a battle with colon cancer.
She was 57.
King worked tirelessly to champion black musicians’ contribution to British culture, and funded the first Music of Black Origin awards in 1996 out of her own pocket.
Tributes have been paid by stars including TV host and Mis-Teeq singer Alesha Dixon, who called King an “incredible woman”, adding: “You helped so many people, your impact is immeasurable!”
Recall that over three decades, the Mobos have become globally renowned for their recognition of black talent – platforming upcoming stars and pushing to break industry boundaries.
King defied expectations as a teenage mother who dropped out of school to gatecrash the predominantly white male music industry.
She studied English literature at London’s Goldsmiths College and later, while working as a TV researcher, spotted a gap in the market for a black-focused awards show.
But success did not come easily.
“I remember being told, ‘You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, why are you talking about race all the time?‘” she told Music Week in 2021.
By 1999, King had been awarded an MBE for services to music as the Mobos grew from scrappy underdog to music industry fixture, holding its own against the long-established Brit Awards.
Its musical spectrum remains uniquely broad – giving early support to UK garage at the turn of the millennium, alongside R&B, soul, reggae, jazz, Afrobeat and broader African music, and championing grime before its mainstream explosion.
Growing up as the youngest of nine children in a cramped council flat in Kilburn, north London, King’s upbringing instilled in her a forthright passion for change and an entrepreneurial spirit.
She told the Evening Standard she felt “written off” when she became a mother at 16, recalling a careers adviser suggesting her best prospect was managing a local Sainsbury’s.
“That put a fire in my belly and gave me the motivation to say ‘Why should I not have ambition’,” she added.
Her aim with the Mobos, she would later write for The Times, was to bridge the “real music divide” that existed at the time, with R&B and hip-hop “completely ignored” by award shows.
Getting it off the ground wasn’t easy, especially as someone attempting to reshape the industry from the outside.
“Rejection became normalised,” she told Music Week. “People didn’t want to take my calls”.
But she made it happen through persistence, eventually gaining support from the few black industry executives of the time, like Dej Mahoney and Stevie Wonder’s former manager Keith Harris.
“My bedroom was my office,” she explained to 1Xtra. “I was answering the phone saying ‘Mobo Organisation’.
People didn’t need to know I had clothes everywhere and the room was in disarray!”.
Her tenacity paid off. The first televised event, held at the Connaught Hotel in London, appeared to come out of nowhere – just seven weeks after her pitch was accepted.
But the ceremony made headlines when Labour’s soon-to-be Prime Minister Tony Blair attended with his wife Cherie, walking the red carpet alongside King.
At the ceremony itself, Lionel Ritchie accepted the Mobo’s first-ever lifetime achievement accolade on stage with Tina Turner.
King’s mother, meanwhile, spent the evening asking Blair if he could find her daughter a job in the government.
It wasn’t until 1999, when King received her MBE, that her mother finally accepted the awards as more than a passion project.
The Mobos’ televised ceremonies soon became star-studded occasions, where UK acts like Craig David, Kano, Amy Winehouse and Stormzy rubbed shoulders with international stars, from blues legend BB King to Destiny’s Child, Usher, Janet Jackson and Rihanna.
But with this increasing mainstream appeal came complications. Negative media coverage nearly ended the event, particularly in 2002, when headlines falsely implicated violence at an unaffiliated after-show party.
As sponsors fled, King remortgaged her home for a second time to avoid the awards collapsing.
The ceremony has also drawn criticism for awarding prizes to popular white artists, including Jamiroquai and Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall. The accusations persisted, especially when Sam Smith swept four awards in 2014.
In 2009, the Mobo awards moved out of London for the first time, and since then, have moved around the UK.
King announced the awards would take a gap year in 2017, which extended to 2020.
King, who was awarded a CBE in 2018 for her contributions to music and culture, later told The Guardian that the hiatus was not down to funding, but asked: “Is Mobo still needed?”
The answer, she decided, was a resounding yes. The Mobos returned with a revamp supporting emerging artists, not just in music but in film, television, and other areas of the arts.
King’s active defiance in defending black interests also extended beyond music. She launched Mobolise to tackle what she called the “scary underrepresentation of black talent” across influential industries.
It mirrored her own expanding influence in numerous committees and advisory groups, including the Creative Industries Council and UK Music Diversity Task Force.
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, she penned an open letter titled “An inconvenient truth” to then-Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, reflecting on her experiences fighting systemic racism.
“I just want to see action. That’s what I want to see. The question I asked myself is: ‘What do I have to do? What do I have to prove to get a seat at that table?’” she concluded.
In December 2024, King announced her stage four bowel cancer diagnosis on Instagram, the same night as receiving a LIVE Foundation lifetime achievement award for her work over almost three decades.
“While this journey will undoubtedly be challenging, I’ve always believed in finding meaning through adversity,” she said.
“If my story can save just one life, then it’s a story worth telling.”
She was last seen on the red carpet at this year’s Mobo Awards in Manchester.
On stage, Pharrell Williams, who received the global songwriter award, paid tribute to King’s determination to keep working through her cancer treatment.
“When you love what you get to do, you’re never working, you’re just having the time of your life.”
