AS the title would suggest, London soul singer Michael Kiwanuka's second album, Love & Hate, is led by emotion.

"Making melodies that capture you was my priority. I was just asking one question, does it move you?” says Kiwanuka, who released his sophomore record in July of last year and is still promoting the chart-topper more than a year later after adding eight autumn dates to his sold-out May travels.

York Barbican will play host to the British Ugandan Londoner's only Yorkshire show on Friday on an itinerary that opened in Birmingham on Monday, with tickets heading rapidly for a sell-out for his York bow.

Produced by Danger Mouse, young Londoner Inflo and Paul Butler and issued on Polydor Records and Interscope Record, Love & Hate is the follow-up to 2012's Mercury Prize-nominated debut Home Again. Such singles as Black Man In A White World and the title track led to a second Mercury nomination and to his first BRIT Awards nominations for Best British Male and Album of the Year.

Where his previous album had the theme of returning home again, Love & Hate addresses leaving home behind, stepping out and Kiwanuka finding himself outside his comfort zone.

Two years in the making, the album found Kiwanuka creating a canvas where his vulnerability took centre stage. While Home Again prompted comparisons with the sensual jazzy folk-soul of Terry Callier or Otis Redding, Kiwanuka cites Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and John Lennon as influences on Love & Hate's simmering, blues-inflected pop-soul songs.

"The melancholy and the sheer honesty of Gaye; he doesn’t hide behind his lyrics," he says, in praise of Marvin Gaye, before reflecting on his own album's distinguishing characteristics.

"The confessional aspect is cathartic for me. You accept it; once it’s done, it’s out there. That’s the therapeutic nature of it. Now, I'm living in a way where I'm not apologising. My first album, I was just worried about everything."

York Press:

"I just needed a new approach to really reflect who I am now," says Michael Kiwanuka

American producer and songwriter Brian Joseph Burton, alias Danger Mouse, was so intrigued by Kiwanuka's earlier work that he asked to work with him, having made his mark on the recordings of Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz and The Black Keys.

Danger Mouse's aptitude for applying "heritage" music in a fresh way was exactly what Kiwanuka was seeking, prompting him to "revisit" himself. "The first album was way more technical," he says. "It was like, ‘OK, we need exactly the right drum sound and an old mic, and the perfect guitar sound’. I love that stuff and I always will, but Brian changed my perspective on it. I realised the music wasn’t just about deconstructing the instruments, it was to feel.”

Inflo and Danger Mouse re-ignited Kiwanuka’s creative energy after a period of self-doubt, and much of the album was written in London, away from his comfort zone of Los Angeles. "I wanted to give up making music after my first album, but this made me realise that I just needed a new approach to really reflect who I am now," he says.

The signature song, Black Man In A White World, was co-written with Inflo and took inspiration from the old American southern blues of Son House, as Kiwanuka revealed his world-view on matters of race, diasporic identity and anxiety.

"That song is about all the sadness and frustrations of childhood, of being one of very few black kids in Muswell Hill, and never feeling like fitting in," he says. "It’s about not feeling like I could be a rock star, of always being categorised as jazz, of attending the Royal Academy of Music and seeing no black people on the course, and thinking just how much I was a black man in a white world."

Kiwanuka explores his spiritual relationship with God on Father’s Child, where he sings "I've been searching for miles and miles/Looking for someone to walk with me" and likens his ad-libs to "speaking in tongues". "That song is about purpose really, its about walking with someone. And those ad-libs feel like tongues, lyrics that pour out from the heart before the brain has had time to process them," he says.

As he emerges from the emotional cocoon of his debut on Love & Hate, Kiwanuka says: "A lot of this album was grappling with the insecurities that I'd learned. The first album was grappling with faith. Here, I'm not so worried about that; I've accepted that it comes and goes, and now, I'm left with myself."

At the top of the album charts, no less.

Michael Kiwanuka, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm. Tickets update: only a smattering of stalls seats still available at £28 on 0844 854 2757, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.