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Why Shakespeare inspires rapper Akala
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 18.03.08
Well-taught: Akala, brother of Ms Dynamite, has loved Shakespeare since school
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It's a Shakespearean quiz for the hiphop generation. How many play titles can you spot in just one track?
Rapper Akala, 24, name-checks the titles of 27 of the Bard's works in his new single, Comedy Tragedy History - itself a reference to Polonius's speech on actors in Hamlet.
Akala, who grew up in Kentish Town and won a Mobo award with his debut album, is a known fan of the playwright and was dubbed the black Shakespeare by some DJs after an early single named in his muse's honour.
His latest track began as a challenge from a DJ on Radio 1 Extra. He gave Akala - real name Kingsley Daley - 15 minutes to produce a freestyle rap incorporating the names of all the plays bar the variations on the histories.
When Akala's business partner and producer, Rez, heard the result, he insisted it must be on the artist's next album.
Two verses play on some of Shakespeare's most famous quotes with wordplay such as "call it urban, call it street/A rose by any other name, smell just as sweet".
Akala said: "There are many fantastic English poets and playwrights and geniuses of English literature but Shakespeare is the major name on the stationery.
"A lot of people in art have a lot of hype but with Shakespeare it's justified. The way one man shaped language in his works and impacted culture is incredible."
He has loved the Bard's work since attending Acland Burghley secondary school in Tufnell Park with his sister and fellow rapper, Ms Dynamite.
Akala said: "I appreciated it even then but felt the way Shakespeare is delivered to young children especially is really rubbish. He is perceived as highbrow and unobtainable but the audience for the Globe had commoners in the pit as well as the upper classes partying in the circle."
The rapper is working with Big Wheel, a theatre company that specialises in education, to develop workshops about Shakespeare for young people and has backing from the Arts Council.
He admitted he has not read all the Bard's works, saying: "I've read the most famous ones and I want to move on to the less well-known ones. But reading Shakespeare is one thing and understanding is something very different."
Akala's latest single is released on 7 April, after his return from a tour of America, which includes a show in New York tonight. He will play the Islington Academy on 2 April.
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