Honoring Kanya King's MOBO Legacy
Kanya King, MOBO Awards Founder Who Championed Black Music in Britain, Dies at 57
Kanya King CBE, founder and CEO of the MOBO Awards, has died at 57 after a battle with colon cancer, with the MOBO Organisation saying she passed away surrounded by family and friends. Launching the MOBOs in 1996, King remortgaged her home and built a platform to recognize Black music in Britain at a time when industry support and institutional backing were largely absent. MOBO described her work as “cultural justice,” saying the awards legitimized and amplified Black artists’ commercial and creative power and helped shatter barriers for a generation of performers. Over the decades, the MOBO stage grew from an underdog initiative into a globally known event spanning hip-hop, grime and other genres, with King associated with transforming British music’s mainstream visibility. Tributes highlighted both her personal resolve and the breadth of her legacy, as well as the 30th anniversary celebrations marking the event’s continued influence in the music industry.
Key Points
In 2024, King announced she had stage-four colon cancer, and at the MOBO Awards in February 2025 she said: “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.”
Speaking at an earlier MOBO event, King told the BBC she had funded the first awards “out of my own pocket,” adding she did it “against my mother’s judgment… but it paid off”.
The BBC reported that King “defied expectations as a teenage mother” who dropped out of school to “gatecrash the predominantly white male music industry,” later studying English literature at Goldsmiths College; she also recalled being told, “You've got a chip on your shoulder, why are you talking about race all the time?”
King’s family said she faced her illness “with courage, with faith, with humour, and with an absolute refusal to be diminished,” describing her as their “mother, … sister, … heart,” and saying she “passed away peacefully” on 3 June 2026 after a “brave and dignified battle with colon cancer.”
Before launching the awards, King was working as a TV researcher and founded the MOBO Awards in 1996 alongside Andy Ruffell.
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