Kiwanuka (2019)

Kiwanuka is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka. It was released on 1 November 2019 through Polydor and Interscope Records. The album won the 2020 Mercury Prize, and was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Metacritic, Kiwanuka has a score of 89 out of 100 based on 21 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 8.5 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.

Dave Simpson of The Guardian hailed Kiwanuka as a "bold, expansive, heartfelt, sublime album" and one of the best of the decade, while Dorian Lynskey of Q called it a "compassionate, career-defining masterpiece". In her review for NME, Elizabeth Aubrey highlighted the personal nature of its lyrics, commending it as "a daring leap of self-affirmation." Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph described it as "an album in which a troubled spirit seeks the relief of music to mesmerising and charged effect." In a year-end essay for Slate, Ann Powers cited Kiwanuka as proof that the album format is not dead but rather undergoing a "metamorphosis", with artists such as Kiwanuka utilizing the concept album through the culturally-relevant autobiographical narratives, which in this case is a "song cycle alchemizing violence through compassion".

The album won the Mercury Prize 2020. It was the third time in his career he had been nominated following nominations for Home Again and Love & Hate but the first time he had won.

Personnel

Credits adapted from digital and printed liner notes.

• Musicians
• Technical

Danger Mouse – producer (1, 3, 4, 7–9, 11, 13, 14)

Inflo – producer (all tracks), recording engineer (12), mixer (4, 6, 12)

Kennie Takahashi – recording engineer (1–5, 7–11, 13, 14), mixer (1, 7, 10)

Tom Campbell – assistant recording engineer (1–3, 5, 7–9, 11, 13, 14), recording engineer (4, 6), strings recording engineer (10)

Richard Woodcraft – mixer (2, 3, 5, 8–11, 13, 14), strings recording engineer (1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14), vocal engineer (7)

Matt Colton – mastering engineer