Kanya King died last week at 57, and the tributes have come in the register reserved for those who changed the landscape: Idris Elba, Pharrell Williams, a clutch of ministers. All warranted. But the real measure of her legacy is less in the roll-call than in what she made structurally possible.
In 1996, King remortgaged her home to fund the first MOBO Awards—Music of Black Origin, a title that announced its intention without apology [1, 2]. Six weeks later, the ceremony was broadcast to the nation [1, 2]. It was not a vanity project. It was an act of institutional engineering. At the time, grime was underground, UK garage barely had a name, and Black British artists who didn't fit the Atlantic mould had no national platform. The MOBOs gave them one [4]. Stormzy, Sade, Lauryn Hill, Destiny's Child: all championed early [1].