WME Signs Award Winning British Hip Hop Artist Akala

Anthony D'Alessandro

3 August 2020 at 3:21 pm·2-min read

EXCLUSIVE: British hip-hop artist, writer, historian and social entrepreneur Akala is returning to WME.

One of the most respected voices in the U.K.’s racial equality and social justice movement, Akala has authored a slate of books, including 2018 memoir Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of the Empire, a Sunday Times Best Seller which sold over 200K copies.

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He is also the co-founder of The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company, a theatre production company aimed at exploring the social, cultural and linguistic parallels between the works of William Shakespeare and that of modern-day hip-hop artists.

In 2006, Akala released his first album, It’s Not a Rumour which had the BBC Radio playlist single “Shakespeare”; the artist winning the MOBO Award for Best Hip Hop Act.

Akala’s show Poetry: Between the Lines – The Romantics won a BAFTA Children’s Award. The series explored the poetry of the Romantic period through the work of Wordsworth, Byron, Blake, Shelley and Keats in a mix of animation, conversation and vignettes. Akala was a presenter on the Somethin Else Productions show.

Akala was previously at WME, then left for UTA and is now back. The agency will focus on building out his business across literary, television, touring, digital, podcasts, commercials, theater and speaking, in addition to working across his production company Immovable Limited.

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