Michael Kiwanuka strips back his sound on ‘Small Changes’

Today on World Cafe, Michael Kiwanuka‘s here to talk about his brand-new album, Small Changes. The English singer, songwriter and producer says his fourth record represents a period of big life changes, including leaving London and fatherhood.

“I was subliminally thinking of the fear of that change,” he says. “Can things stay as they were? Can I adapt? And it sort of became the subject of the album.”

The Mercury Prize winner talks about how past successes gave him the confidence to experiment with his sound. Small Changes strips back some of the production elements from 2019’s Kiwanuka, bringing his voice back to the forefront. That production comes courtesy of co-producers Danger Mouse and Inflo.

Plus, Kiwanuka shares what song he originally thought was too cheesy, but now is one his favorites on the record.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.