Smiley culture: a hybrid voice for the Commonwealth

Smiley Culture’s career illuminates the formal and informal structures of identity in multicultural Britain and the Commonwealth. Through his surprise breakthrough singles, popularity in the press and role as a figurehead of the Commonwealth Institute, he tied together the everyday experiences of race in Britain, and the history and role of the nation on the global stage. In this chapter I will use Smiley Culture’s voice, words and work to track how local tensions around race, politics and the law on the streets of London, were played out in communities, in the nation and in imagined international communities.