Thirty years ago, June 6 -- The phone call that Kanya King had never stopped preparing for finally came on June 3. She died, the MOBO Organisation confirmed on Friday, at 57, surrounded by her family and close friends at home. The cause was colon cancer, a stage four diagnosis she had disclosed publicly in 2024 and then, characteristically, refused to let define her.

she was a single mother from a council estate in Kilburn, north London - and financed a single awards ceremony to celebrate music of Black origin. No institutional backing. No industry support. Six weeks of planning. When the first MOBO Awards broadcast to the nation in 1996, the industry that had told her there was no market for Black music watched one of the most-talked-ab...