Michael Kiwanuka: Love & Hate (2LP) [POLYDOR]

Why you'll love it

This Polydor 2LP set gives the album's long, slow-building songs four sides to breathe. Love & Hate drew universal acclaim, a Metacritic score of 86, and landed on many critics' lists of the year's best albums.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Polydor edition

About the album

Some albums open with a quick hit. Love & Hate opens with a long, patient slow burn, which tells you plenty about how sure of himself Michael Kiwanuka had become. Four years after his Mercury-nominated debut Home Again, the London singer-songwriter teamed with Danger Mouse, Inflo and Paul Butler and went bigger, deeper and a lot more cinematic. Four singles followed, starting with "Black Man in a White World" in March 2016.

"Cold Little Heart" unfolds slowly into a gospel-soul chorus, "Black Man in a White World" is a stark, rhythmic statement, and the title song builds to a huge, soulful swell. Hiro Murai directed the video for "Black Man in a White World," and the songs have since found a second life on screen, from Suits and When They See Us to Hacks.

The Telegraph said it sounds like a world of music in itself, and The Guardian heard an artist coming into his own. If the opening of Big Little Lies has been living in your head since 2017, this is where it actually lives, and it's been paying rent all along.

Also at Kops: more Michael Kiwanuka on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Listen

On Polydor, a reissue of the 2016 album.