Remembering MOBO founder Kanya King, 1969-2026

“Kanya King altered the course of Black British music forever. In the 30 years since the first MOBO Awards took place, her presence has given voice and visibility to legions of would-be superstars attempting to make their mark. King built the infrastructure to guide them, the opportunities to empower them and the ceremony to celebrate them.

MOBO’s founder and CEO passed away peacefully on June 3, aged 57, after what the MOBO Organisation described as a “courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer”, surrounded by her family and the people who loved her most.

“What Kanya created was never simply an awards ceremony,” read a MOBO statement. “It was an act of cultural justice. MOBO did not just celebrate Black music; it legitimised it, amplified it, and demonstrated its commercial and creative power to a world that had too often chosen not to see it.”

Her family, meanwhile, remembered their “mother, sister and heart”, who “faced every moment of her illness as she faced every moment of her life: with courage, with faith, with humour and with an absolute refusal to be diminished.”