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Nov 1, 2019It sounds timeless and contemporary; the instrumental interludes and the stylistic and tempo shifts all hang together because of his warm, sincere vocals and fantastic songwriting.
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Oct 29, 2019As with each of his albums to date, Kiwanuka navigates the past and the present, skilfully making sounds and subjects appear both classic and contemporary at once.
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Oct 25, 2019This is an exceptionally compelling, absorbing, rich, and genuinely human piece of work.
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Q MagazineOct 22, 2019Magnificent. ... Kiwanuka rewards your commitment from the first second to the last. [Dec 2019, p.104]
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Oct 22, 2019Ultimately, this is an album in which a troubled spirit seeks the relief of music to mesmerising and charged effect. And that is timeless.
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Nov 15, 2019It’s very easy for a reviewer to play armchair warrior and forward claims for all sorts of nonsense for music they like. But this is a glorious, heart-stopping, essential album. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it.
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Nov 11, 2019Michael Kiwanuka has undoubtedly created a timeless album, one made with impressive confidence.
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Nov 7, 2019[Love & Hate] was a magnificent album, and the formula is continued with the same collaborators to stunning effect on KIWANUKA.
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Oct 23, 2019Kiwanuka is therapeutic for all parties involved. It's honest, psychedelic, enlightening and recalls blackness defined by acoustic folk and the organic soul of past artists like Gil Scott-Heron, Bobby Womack and Otis Redding.
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UncutOct 22, 2019Kiwanuka is loaded with memorable songs, but the best way to experience them is by listening to the album from start to finish. [Nov 2019, p.26]
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Nov 4, 2019Songs melt into one another without losing their identities. Kiwanuka’s narrators drift through a world torn by violence and racism and find purpose. His voice remains plaintive, understated, deeply textured, but there’s a resolve that wasn’t as evident on his earlier work.
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Nov 12, 2019An album that could have been a grueling downer from start to finish. Instead, it’s a testament to perseverance, determination and a vivid creative imagination from an artist who seems to have finally found himself, and that’s profound enough.
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Nov 14, 2019Kiwanuka could very well be one of the best albums of 2019. But Kiwanuka is also a beautiful, deep place that feels like it will be worth visiting, not just in the last month of this year, but throughout a listener's lifetime.
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Nov 4, 2019The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia. Its influences span decades; Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar and Bobby Womack are all recalled.
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Nov 4, 2019Kiwanuka stands head and shoulders above it as a complex, communicative, poetic, and sometimes even profound collection that wears its heart on its sleeve and its sophistication in its grooves.
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MojoOct 22, 2019An album that's thoughtful, emotional, expertly crafted and often sublime. [Nov 2019, p.84]
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Oct 22, 2019This isn’t as immediately powerful or riveting as Love & Hate. But the multifaceted material, along with the pioneering, organic and often offbeat production, grows on you. Listening closely with headphones heightens and intensifies the experience.
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Nov 8, 2019Even for fans of his debut, the soft-spoken, acoustic Home Again, Kiwinuka's latest features some of the DNA of that record as well—albeit in light of his new-found electric, sharper side.
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Nov 1, 2019Offering no blandishments, no expressions of we’ll-get-through-this, Kiwanuka is a nerve-wracked, sustained act of whistling in the dark. Absent, though, is any hint of reveling: a tendency that often leads to soul rot.
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Oct 24, 2019With its carefully-crafted sequencing and seamless interludes, Kiwanuka feels like a proper old-fashioned album constructed as such, with some of its brightest highlights buried deep into the record’s latter half.
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Nov 4, 2019The only downside is that Kiwanuka could have been even braver.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 84 out of 95
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Mixed: 8 out of 95
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Negative: 3 out of 95
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Nov 2, 2019
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Nov 1, 2019
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Oct 15, 2022Quite possibly one of the greatest albums of the 21st century. A sublime, soulful experience.