Colourful

When I newly moved to the UK, a lot of us believed the maximum we could make was circa £2,000/month. Until I got to the construction site and met a Chartered Engineer doing £600/day, an Electrician clearing £300/day! Ah! My brain reset, kiakia, I went back to Uni at 30 to do Civil Engineering! Abroad will be hard at the start, but it gets better with time!

Be an encouragement. Be encouraging. Be an encourager. This world and this life are hard. Why would you choose to be an enemy when you can give someone the energy to try one more time? It costs you nothing to be the reason that someone doesn't lose hope.

Join me live on @colourfulradio from 22:00 (GMT) later tonight for your 2 hour weekly fix of the best, freshest soulful beats from across the World. Proper music, proper vibes. 🫡 🌐 📻 Listen live on DAB, online or via the Colourful website.

HAPPY FRIDAY ! GOOD NEWS 📰 I’ve been selected as an SXSW London Mentor. Still taking that in. Grateful. From documenting the culture to now sitting with people and helping shape what comes next. That shift means everything to me. If you’re building in music, you can book a private 20-minute session with me during the festival. We’ll get straight into it. Strategy, positioning, audience, direction. Whatever you need clarity on. No fluff. Just truth. Slots open a week before the festival. Be ready. 1–6 June 2026 sxswlondon.com/mentors/mimi-i…

🚨 Exclusive!! ‼️ The immense talent that is @davidajala joins @assatataughtmeplay as Associate Producer via his VP & CHAIRMAN production company. This marks a major new collaboration between the my company @ssesoproductions and the production outfit helmed by David.

NEW SUBSTACK !!! Word to Kano… Don’t beg. That’s disgusting. But also… don’t build something great and then act like it’s not. New Substack because I had to check myself first. I’ve been in the same conversations. Same group chats. Same takes. Comparing UK artists to Americans like that’s the benchmark. Calling it “standards” when sometimes it’s just habit. And it’s getting weird!!!!!!!!!!!!! A UK festival can’t confidently replace a US headliner with UK talent. People openly say they wouldn’t pay to see UK artists headline… in the UK. Sit with that????? This isn’t about lack of talent. It’s about how we see OURSELVES. We treat proximity like it cancels greatness. Because we know where someone’s from, we act like they’re not special. Meanwhile, other cultures archive, protect, and elevate their own without hesitation. We built world-class culture. Then downplayed it. And the worst part? The same people who defend the scene will turn around and dismiss it for a joke, a tweet, a moment. So what are we actually doing????? This isn’t a call-out. It’s a call-in. If you love this culture, act like it!! Be honest, yes. But know the difference between critique and just being cold. Because if we don’t rate our own, why would anyone else? New Substack - open.substack.com/pub/mimithemus…

Would you kidnap a former Black Panther member for $2m? That's the premise for #AssataTaughtMe. My hit 2017 play returning this time at @RiversideLondon 12-24th May 2026. Visit riversidestudios.co.uk/whats-on/mp-as… to get your tickets. You can DM for discount code that gets you £10 tix #cuba

Afroswing is one of the most successful genres to ever come out of UK both sales and touring wise and it was created by the culture. Every consumer, every manager, every A&R, every event organiser, every DJ, every song writer, every producer, every artist involved in it 🫡 👏🏽🏆

200 year old Black boxers to get blue plaque in Trafalgar Square

The Black community has been forced to settle for inadequate coverage that seeks to exploit for views & clicks. But we deserve better. For impactful journalism invested in community subscribe to my site The Community Reporter formerly known as The Source. thecommunityreporter.co.uk

He is one of the greatest of all time. Below are my portraits of Uncle Charlie.

Soulful vibes incoming from 22:00 (GMT) on the only station to plug into on a Saturday night @colourfulradio New tracks, the odd dancefloor classic and a whole load of Northern charm - trust me, it's a good place, full of good vibes. Listen live on DAB, online or via the web!

I can no longer hold my tongue seeing the utter lies being spread about Britain, our history of migration, and how this country was built into what it is today. For those so deeply buried in fake news, manufactured outrage and billionaire‑funded propaganda, I’m going to lay out the truth – and exactly why you’re being fed all this poison. Britain was never a sealed white island. From Roman times there were African soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and living in British towns, people from across the empire walking these roads nearly 2,000 years ago. Through the Middle Ages and Tudor England you still find Black people in the records – sailors, craftsmen, servants, musicians – even Black musicians at the royal court and Africans being baptised, marrying and being buried in English parishes like anyone else. This isn’t some modern experiment; it’s older than half the castles people visit on their bank‑holiday tours. As Britain went out into the world, the world came here. Sailors and traders from India, Yemen and beyond were arriving in British ports from the 1600s. Some of those men were practising a new faith to most Britons at the time, praying quietly in boarding houses near the docks while they worked brutal shifts in the engine rooms of British ships. Over the centuries, more people from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia passed through and settled, bringing their languages, foods and beliefs into port cities that were far more mixed than today’s nostalgia merchants like to admit. After two world wars, the truth is simple: this country asked the Commonwealth to come and rebuild it. People from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia didn’t sneak in; they were recruited. They came to drive buses and trains, staff the NHS, work in mills and foundries, clean offices, run corner shops, open takeaways and small businesses, and yes, build prayer spaces and community centres alongside churches and temples in the neighbourhoods everyone now pretends were always “traditional” and “unchanged”. They did the work that kept Britain going while being told to go home, refused housing, and treated as permanent outsiders. And what have they been paid back with? Scandals where people who’ve lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades get told they don’t belong. Policies designed to make life so hostile that some give up and leave. A media that uses their names, accents, clothes or places of worship as props in endless scare stories. The message is always the same: you might toil for this country, but you will never fully be of it. So when you hear that “Britain was white until recently” or that the country has been “overrun”, understand that you don’t arrive at that belief by accident. You get there because your history has been deliberately ripped out and replaced with a comforting myth: that “real” Britain is white, homogenous, and constantly under siege from people who look, speak or pray differently. Now look at when this myth has been turned up to max volume. Wages frozen. Housing a sick joke. Energy and food prices out of control. Public services hacked to pieces. At the same time, the number of people hoarding unimaginable wealth at the top has exploded. Funny, isn’t it, how every front page is about boats and “swarms” and “our culture”, and almost never about the landlords, hedge funds, private equity and offshore trusts quietly buying up your city and your future. That’s because this isn’t just prejudice; it’s a strategy. If you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth, the last thing you want is ordinary people – of every colour and background – realising they have the same problems and the same enemy. Much safer if the factory worker is furious at the new family down the road. Much safer if the person who can’t see a doctor blames the nurse with an accent instead of the minister who cut the funding. Much safer if a man who can’t afford his rent spends his rage on the woman in a headscarf at the bus stop instead of the billionaire who owns half his city. Racist rhetoric, religious dog‑whistling, all of it, exists to break solidarity. It turns neighbours into enemies and stops people seeing that Black, brown and white working‑class communities have far more in common with each other than any of them will ever have with the people flying in on private jets. It keeps you so busy policing skin colour, passports and prayer mats that you never get round to asking why your kids can’t afford a home, why your parents can’t get a hospital bed, why you’re working harder and standing still. The real story of Britain is this: a crossroads, not a fortress. Africans on Hadrian’s Wall. Black people in Tudor courts and city streets. Sailors, traders and workers from South Asia, the Middle East and beyond in the ports. Caribbean, African and Asian workers rebuilding the country after the war, staffing surgeries and hospitals, driving cabs, running shops, cooking food, teaching kids. Today’s multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith working class is not a glitch; it is Britain. It built this place and it keeps it running. If you’re genuinely angry about what’s happening to this country, good. You should be. But aim it where it belongs. Britain was never pure, never untouched, never “theirs” to take back. The people ruining your standard of living are not the ones risking their lives to get here, or the ones whose names you struggle to pronounce. They’re the ones buying politicians, owning media outlets, writing the story of this country so you never learn your own – and never realise who is standing beside you.

“SUDAN IS NOT A CRISIS THE WORLD HAS FAILED TO NOTICE. IT IS A CRISIS THE WORLD IS CHOOSING TO IGNORE.” Moazzam Malik, CEO of Save the Children UK @savechildrenuk

Sudan is now the largest child displacement crisis in the world, yet it remains one of the most overlooked. 5 million children have been forced from their homes. 17 million children require humanitarian assistance. Nearly half of Sudan’s children have lost between 15 and 18 months of schooling. These numbers are almost impossible to grasp. But in Sudan at the beginning of this month, our CEO, Moazzam Malik, met the children behind the statistics. He has written a moving opinion piece for the the independent talking about his experiences. Swipe to gain his insight. #keepeyesonsudan via @savechildrenuk

CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE! 🏆 Congratulations to the England Deaf Women's team! 👏

Lifting the trophy 🏆 The England Deaf Women's team are European champions! 😀

Join me from 22:00 (GMT) on @colourfulradio for this week's edition of The Soulfuledge Mix Show. Some proper under the bonnet special stuff this week including... a world spin of something new from me & TNMB 🤫 Listen on DAB, online or via the Colourful website. 🌐 📻 🫡

Today is #worlddownsyndromeday I’ve photographed them all, and nothing compares to these celestial children! My lens is rejoicing! FOR TOO long, Black children with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21) have been invisible, absent from mainstream representation. Behold the beauty, resilience and potential of Black children with Down syndrome, reframe the conversation around the intersection of race and disability. “Assume competence. Assume first that these children are capable rather than incapable. That single shift in perspective changes everything,” says Oneness Sankara, BCDS Co-Founder.

Today is #worlddownsyndromeday I’ve photographed them all, and nothing compares to these celestial children! My lens is rejoicing! FOR TOO long, Black children with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21) have been invisible, absent from mainstream representation. Behold the beauty, resilience and potential of Black children with Down syndrome, reframe the conversation around the intersection of race and disability. “Assume competence. Assume first that these children are capable rather than incapable. That single shift in perspective changes everything,” says Oneness Sankara, BCDS Co-Founder.