Artists beginning with K

K'naan
The Dusty Foot Philosopher (2005)
A escapee from wartorn Somalia, by the time he was 26 K'naan Warsame had delivered this brutally candid missive from his adopted Canada. A record of poetic rapping and eye-popping storytelling, it's infinitely closer to the tumbling wordplay of 60s icons the Last Poets than to the showiness of Jay-Z or Kanye.

Salif Keita
Soro (1987)
This is the album that established Salif Keita as an international star, and brought the African desert state of Mali to the attention of western music fans. It was recorded in Paris with a band that included brass and keyboards, but was remarkable for Keita's powerful, soulful vocals and lyrics inspired by the ancient history of his homeland.

Kelis
Kaleidoscope (1999)
Kelis Rogers gatecrashed the pop landscape with the vengeful, raging Caught Out There. On its parent album, she would prove herself equally adept at hip-swivelling, lusty grooves and sumptuous, psychedelic balladry; and her production team, the Neptunes, would go on to shape the next half-decade of pop.

Stan Kenton
City of Glass (1995)
Unconventional swing bandleader Kenton liked massive volume and huge bands, complex and highly structured works, classical references (Stravinsky and Ravel particularly); he delivered a kind of prog-jazz of the 40s and 50s. It could be hyperbolic, but these are some of the best-realised of his experimental works, with remarkable arrangements by Bob Graettinger.

Khaled
Khaled (1992)
Up until this point, Algeria's singer-most-likely-to... had earned his stripes backed by the cheap Casio sound that typified home-produced rai. This record, with Don Was at the controls, offered a widescreen canvas and took Khaled international, thanks in large part to the limb-loosening global funk of Didi.

Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
25 Greatest Hits (1998)
You probably don't need 23 of the songs here but the first two are perhaps the only British rock'n'roll songs fit to stand beside the US greats. Shakin' All Over and Please Don't Touch - both later covered by the Who and Motörhead/Girlschool respectively - have a sleaziness utterly missing from anythng by Kidd's Britrock rivals.

The Killers
Hot Fuss (2004)
A British indie band who weren't British. An 80s sound that wasn't from the 80s. The Killers were a confusing proposition, but one unashamed of ambition, and equipped with choruses big enough to silence critics. The likes of Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me won over teeny-boppers, indie kids and those nostalgic for everyone from Duran Duran to the Smiths.

Killing Joke
Killing Joke (1980)
No other band defined living in the shadow of the Bomb like Killing Joke. Truculent and preposterously heavy, this rampaging debut united punks and metallers in limb-flailing, dancefloor-shredding mayhem and was a profound influence on industrial/leftfield innovators from Nine Inch Nails to Nirvana.

Soweto Kinch
Conversations With the Unseen (2003)
Soweto Kinch burst on the scene with a new way of playing jazz, combining edgy post-bop with hand-played versions of the grooves and broken beats of hip-hop. This debut demonstrates Kinch's complex but beguiling tunes, but what makes Conversations special is his thoughtful rapping.

King Crimson
In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)
King Crimson were one of the original progressive rock bands and although their debut apparently didn't capture their monstrously powerful live sound, its combination of Mellotron-led anthems, complete with Peter Sinfield's absurdly rococo lyrics, snarling jazz rock and meditative free improvisational passages, still sounds mightily impressive.

Carole King
Tapestry (1971)
On first listen nothing more than a likable collection of dreamy west coast songwriting, Tapestry turned out to be far greater than the sum of its parts. Spurred on by King's husky voice and the single It's Too Late, it sold and sold, spending six years in the chart and influencing everyone from Carly Simon to Tori Amos.

The Kinks
Face to Face (1966)
Invariably rushed and underfunded, the Kinks' albums were overshadowed by their unimpeachable 60s singles. But here, they finally attained a kind of perfection: music poised between raw R&B, languid psychedelia and music-hall affectation. Ray Davies' sublime songwriting is savage yet affectionate in its satire of fading aristocrats and aspirant working classes alike.

KLF
The White Room (1991)
Memories of the KLF usually focus on their high art concepts - the dead sheep and machine guns at the Brits - or their premature retirement and subsequent burning of a million quid. But the duo's antics were only possible because they stormed the global charts with this magnificent collection of acid-house pop.

The Knife
Silent Shout (2006)
The mind-blowing and singularly disquieting sound of a band pushing themselves to the limits of pop, Silent Shout is dominated by a sense of sinister dysfunction. Karin Dreijer sings as though on the brink of insanity through a forest of mangled electronics and stabbing beats. Brrrr.

Konono No 1
Congotronics (2005)
This groundbreaking debut from the six-strong Congolese collective blasts out of the speakers like a thrilling parade of west African rave. Combining the firepower of amplified thumb pianos, carnival vocals and whistles, its relentless rhythms suggest Steve Reich's modern compositions, raucous electronica - and the greatest party ever.

Kool & the Gang
The Very Best Of (1999)
This collection covers the various phases of this New Jersey dance troupe, who formed in 1964 as a jazz band, from their early-70s gritty funk work-outs such as Jungle Boogie (featured in Pulp Fiction) to their smooth 80s disco standbys, including Celebration and Get Down On It.

Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba
Segu Blue (2007)
Bassekou Kouyate is an exponent of the n'goni, the ancient west African lute, but he has been compared to Hendrix because of his extraordinary improvised playing. After working with guitar hero Ali Farka Touré, he founded his own band, which includes four n'goni players and his wife, the singer Ami Sacko, and is dominated by his virtuoso, often rapid-fire solos.

Kraftwerk
The Mix (1991)
A work of sacrilege, according to the German faux-cyborgs' more hard-bitten disciples, though this retooling of their Greatest Hits was kept in-house, and was thus the model of subtlety and restraint. The best example: a sharpened-up Autobahn, which arguably improves on the original.

Lenny Kravitz
Let Love Rule (1989)
Lenny Kravitz wrote, produced and played almost all the instruments on this debut, marking him out as Prince's heir apparent. Subtle, funky, peppered with sax and social comment, it was attacked for its retro feel and debt to the Beatles, but now sounds like a breath of fresh air.

Kronos Quartet/ Pat Metheny/Steve Reich Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint (1990)
Different Trains, with its locomotive rhythms and melodies generated by the cadences of speech, is a meditation on Reich's wartime childhood and the fate of Jews in the Holocaust; it's the composer's most moving work. A piece for overdubbed guitars, Electric Counterpoint was notoriously sampled by the Orb for Little Fluffy Clouds.

Kruder & Dorfmeister
The K&D Sessions (1998)
Viennese trip-hop experts Kruder & Dorfmeister never got around to releasing an album under their own name, perhaps because they used up all their best ideas on remixing other people. On this bumper-sized compilation, they are dub-updating heirs to Lee "Scratch" Perry, ushering the likes of Depeche Mode and Lamb into their stoned netherworld.

Fela Kuti

The Best of Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon

One of the most colourful figures in the history of African music, Fela Kuti was a bandleader, songwriter, singer, saxophonist, keyboard-player and percussionist who pioneered a new style of Nigerian music, afrobeat, in which he mixed traditional styles with Western funk and jazz. But he was equally known for his wild, flamboyant lifestyle, his angry political songs and often painful battles with the Nigerian ­military authorities. He recorded more than 50 albums before his death in 1997, but was never as well known in Europe and America as Bob Marley, in many ways his Jamaican equivalent. He faced harassment by the Nigerian authorities - in 1984, he was jailed as he was preparing for a major American tour, and was declared a ­political prisoner by Amnesty.
Within Nigeria, Kuti became a celebrity, thanks both to his music and rebel stance. He declared the area around his club in Lagos, the Shrine, to be an independent state, the Kalakuta Republic, protected by an electric fence.
It was at the Shrine that Fela's firebrand ­politics and musical invention were seen and heard at their best. He came on stage around two or three in the morning, often puffing on a joint as he launched into his angry attacks on the government or corruption in Nigerian ­society. His lengthy songs mixed thunderous percussion with his own improvised solos and call-and-response vocals, in which he was ­answered back by his well-choreographed ­female chorus. His decision in 1978 to marry all of his 27 singers and dancers on the same day added to his notoriety and legend (though, in 1986, he announced that marriage was a bad idea and divorced them all).
It's difficult to capture on record the sense
of danger, anger and invention that marked
out Fela's best live performances, but this set, ­released after his death, is a reminder that he should be remembered for his music and
not just his lifestyle. It includes a DVD of a
documentary filmed in Lagos in 1982, which includes several performances from the Shrine.
The two-CD set includes many of his best songs, from the cheerful, upbeat Lady and the slinky Zombie, notable for its funky guitar work and fine sax solos, through to the angry ITT (International Thief Thief) and perhaps his most bitter work, Coffin for Head of State, a ­reference to the most violent incident in Fela's often painful career. In 1977, the self-proclaimed republic around Kuti's club was attacked by soldiers, after he had embarrassed President Olusegun Obasanjo by refusing to take part in a pan-African festival held in Lagos. Kuti claimed his singers and dancers were raped, and that his mother died after being thrown from a ­window. Later, he presented Obasanjo with a replica of his mother's coffin - and a song that combines the musical originality and political fury of one of Africa's greatest performers. Robin Denselow

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