Akira The Don

Akira The Don is one of the most prolific, versatile, and consistently innovative pop musicians at work today. He was born in West Bromwich in 1980, raised in North Wales, and left home and school by the age of 16, relocating to the midands where he joined a glam thrash band and wrote and illustrated a fanzine. After years spent traversing the UK, where he found work in a car door handle factory, a football shop, a chemist, a record shop, a door-to-door gas sales racket, and a PR firm - alongside numerous bars and clubs, he found himself living in London aged 22 and the editor of pioneering music website PlayLouder.com. At this point he decided to channel his accumulated knowledge of life and the music industry and become a full time musician. A year later he launched akirathedon.com with the first free downloadable rap mixtape, and a few months later flew to America, where he got lost in some woods and signed his first major label record deal. His debut LP, When We Were Young was released in 2006.

Since then, he has released over 40 mixtapes and albums, along with a string of animated and live-action videos that have won him an international reputation. He produces records for other artists, including two top-40 hits for British grime star Lethal Bizzle, and collaborates with a wide array of musicians, including London grime superstar Big Narstie, Welsh Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys and Canadian Entertainist Chilly Gonazles.

He continues to maintain the daily updated "best artist website in the world", akirathedon.com, on which users can read his blogs and comics, and stream all of his 400-odd (and counting) songs.