It is with immeasurable sorrow that the MOBO Organisation announces the passing of its Founder and CEO, Kanya King CBE.
Kanya passed away peacefully on 3 June 2026 after a courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer. She was surrounded by her family, close friends and love.
Thirty years ago, Kanya King remortgaged her home, alone, without institutional backing or industry support, to build a stage that would transform British music forever.
She was a single mother from a Kilburn council estate who was told that Black music was too niche, that there was no market and that the industry was not interested. Instead of arguing, she built. Six weeks later, the first MOBO Awards was broadcast to the nation, and nothing was ever the same again.
What Kanya created was never simply an awards ceremony. It was an act of cultural justice. MOBO did not just celebrate Black music; it legitimised it, amplified it and transformed the cultural landscape of the UK.
From Stormzy, Little Simz and RAYE to Craig David, Ms. Dynamite, Amy Winehouse, Central Cee and countless others, generations of artists have benefited from Kanya King's vision.
She built a platform that reached hundreds of millions of people around the world. She was awarded a CBE and received an Ivors Academy Honour in 2025. She never stopped. She never asked for permission. She never accepted that the word “no” was final.
When she stood on the MOBO stage in Newcastle in February 2025, just months after her diagnosis, she told the audience: “I never allowed someone to define my limits. Not in life. Not in business. And I’m certainly not going to have that happen now.”
That was Kanya King. Right to the very end.
The 2026 MOBO Awards, held during the Organisation’s landmark 30th anniversary year, will be dedicated entirely to her memory.
The world was a profoundly better place with Kanya King in it. The MOBO family is heartbroken, but endlessly grateful, proud and inspired by everything she gave to music, culture and future generations.
Rest in power, Kanya.
You built this.
All of it.
We still do not know every detail surrounding the disappearance of Dawa Sherpa, who has been missing high on Mt Everest since 28 May. We also acknowledge and apploud that 8K Expeditions came out and now taken the initiative to organize an aerial search in an effort to locate him. But one difficult question remains: if the climber left behind on Everest had been a foreign client, would the response have been the same? Or would there have been a far greater and more immediate effort to search for and rescue them?
It is an uncomfortable question, but one that deserves to be asked.
For decades, Sherpas have been the backbone of Everest. They fix the ropes, break the trail, carry the loads, support clients, and make countless summit dreams possible. Much of the commercial climbing industry that once depended on Western guiding companies now relies heavily on the skill, strength, and sacrifice of Sherpa climbers and their companies. Yet when a Sherpa goes missing high on the mountain, where is that same urgency? Where is that same determination to bring him home?
Dawa Sherpa has now been missing on Everest for days. Beyond the business, the records, the permits, and the commercialization, this tragedy should remind us of a simple truth: a Sherpa life is worth no less than any other life on the mountain.
Everest should not place a different value on a human being based on nationality, wealth, or whether they are a client or a worker.
Every life matters equally. Every missing climber deserves the same urgency. Every family deserves answers.
Photo Courtesy: Kumbha Rai.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the GRANDMASTER of GREEN the legendary @B_Real@cypresshill 🎈🎂🍾🪴
We’ve slayed a million shows on a million stages around the world throughout the years homie & it’s my honor to slay a million more.⚔️
Love ya bro.🤜🏼🤛🏾
#BReal#CypressHill#DrGreenthumb
If Philadelphia International Records were a sports team, Dexter Wansel was its Most Valuable Player, as keyboardist, composer, arranger, vocalist and producer. His music traveled from the star-crossed Nights Over Egypt to Life on Mars. R.I.P. https://t.co/HFgmfGYzuT
Sonny Rollins, arguably the greatest improviser in jazz history, left us last week at the age of 95. But he lives on through the wealth of recordings he left behind.
They just don't make full-service polymaths like Dexter Wansel anymore. Philly soul architect, keyboard master, electronic music pioneer, studio rat, Afrofuturist, prolific songwriter, arranger, and producer. We just lost an undeniable giant.