When British guitarist Michael Kiwanuka released his first album in 2012, Home Againhe is painfully shy. When we find him twelve years later in Paris, after these remarkable Love and hate (2016) and Kiwanuka (2019), winner of the prestigious Mercury Prize, nominated for Best Rock Album alongside his idols The Strokes at the American Grammy Awards in 2021, the thirty-year-old has gained confidence. While releasing her ironically titled fourth album Small changesthe Ugandan-born singer, almost jovial, speaks more lightly about his change and his projects, including a world tour that will pass through France on February 28, 2025.
According to him, his producers, with whom he has been working since 2016, the American Danger Mouse, former member of Gnarls Barkley and collaborator of Gorillaz (Damon Albarn’s collective), and the Englishman Inflo, the rapper’s beatmaker. Little Simzhave a lot to do with its transformation: “I love my first album, Home Again, summarizes Kiwanuka, but he was very focused on my acoustic guitar. At the time I didn’t know I could write a song like that The black man in a white worldabout my identity as a black man in a white world. My producers are phenomenal and they are artists themselves. So I think like myself, pushing myself to answer questions like: “What would your song sound like if you sang these angry lyrics? What would it mean to you to show that you can also play the electric guitar?” »
New inner peace
With them, Kiwanuka will discover the great studios of Los Angeles on Sunset Boulevard and New York, daring to invite musicians to accompany him on the guitar he has been playing since the age of 12. The one who worships the soul of the 1970s, records what is happening by Marvin Gaye, Inspirational information by Shuggie Otis, but also the strings on Nick Drake’s folk albums, he can afford to bring up to 16 fiddlers into the studio on tracks like Parade floata song about his new inner peace: “Danger Mouse and Inflo took me to new artistic places, he explained. Before, I thought my music would never be as honest as playing the guitar alone. I didn’t know how else to do it, they helped me get to where I am. Now that I’ve found my way, a route and the process to get there, I’m sticking with them. It’s like my world was black and white before and they helped me color it. »
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