Wolverhampton unsigned star Kupid The King to build on US trip

The 28-year-old from Wolverhampton splits his time between working as a youth mentor and mental health first aider at The Switch Project, and writing songs he hopes will reach out to those he helps out.

And as recent activities show, it’s not just this side of the pond his work speaks to people.

Earlier this year, Kupid became Wolverhampton’s first official ambassador for TAPES UK, an international community for grime and hip-hop artists.

His TAPES journey began with an Arts Council England-supported project at Birmingham-based Zion Recording Studios, where he worked with Second City artist Elektric, engineer Tony Biggz and Atlanta, USA, producer AMG to record a collaboration track.

Read more: Wolverhampton's Kupid The King takes brand to the USA

That led to an invitation to attend All 3 Coasts (A3C) Festival & Conference in Atlanta, working with UK and US-based producers at the world-renowned Patchwerk Recording Studios to put the finishing touches to an album they’ve spent months collaborating on.

“To be honest, I didn’t actually know what I was signing up for,” the former Heath Park High School pupil told the Star. “I went to an event they hosted.

“My original understanding of TAPES was it was an online network of DJs and artists which made it easy to get their songs played on radio and in clubs, so naturally I signed up.” The Atlanta trip was a success. And as we said, Kupid is busy. “The album recorded with TAPES is now being mastered by Zion Records,” he says. “I’m currently working on a few international collaborations with US artists and producers. I hope to have two EPs completed and released by March.

“In February, artist J.Bizz of Richmond, Virginia, and California producer Marc Brook will be coming to the UK to perform the track we did out there and work on new music. I’ll be taking them to meet Spock at Beatsabar Studios [at Newhampton Arts Centre] and I will bring them to Wolverhampton to perform too.”

And despite his eyes now being firmly on making the future as bright as possible, Kupid has never forgotten his roots – he says he was ‘raised by Wolves’.

“I guess I’ve always been into music,” he adds. “I was raised in church in a musical family, some of my earliest memories are of my sisters and cousins singing in church, my brothers playing instruments and hearing my cousin on the radio.

“Over the years I performed renditions of Wyclef Jean, Tupac and Coolio songs in secondary school talent shows. I was also in two of the big secondary school musical performances of Annie and Fame! where I had lead singing roles.

“I first started making my own music when I was 13. I remember sitting at the PC underneath the stairs just making beats all day, I didn’t have any headphones or decent monitors so my brothers, sisters and mum just had to listen to me. The first time I performed one of my own songs was when I went to SamSharps Studio and recorded a song I wrote called Be Somebody You Would Be Proud Of with Lester ‘Dread Lester’ Samuels. “He liked that I was writing a song with a message and asked me to perform it at Wolverhampton City Show at West Park. Every year I performed at City Show and after we lost Dread Lester I felt that the city became less and less supportive of young aspiring artists, and so I tried to fill the gap by hosting events, stages and a radio show.”

Kupid loved helping others, but he felt that doing so was stunting his own growth as a musician as the amount of time he had to work on his own material dwindled. He was now a father, too. Something had to give. So he made the decision to focus on the Kupid brand, and has never looked back.

“I decided it was time to take my music to the next level so I knew that I had to put my all in, to be more selfish with my time and energy. I also said that I was going to stop doing events so that I could put everything into promoting myself as an artist.

“The moment I decided I needed to pay more attention to myself I noticed a lot of other artists became less supportive, I found many people will only support you if you’re not doing as well as them. But that does not go for everybody, there are a few artists who I’ve become very close to and I can honestly say we lift each other up and empower each other.”

They formed the collective UFO – Kupid alongside Ali Davidson, Candy Grant, Ellisse Daley, Joy B, Jasmine Leslie-Booth and Theophilus Madikizela.

Since then, releasing new music has been a big part of Kupid’s life. “The first release is part of the writing process,” he says. “This is the release from my head to the page, which to me is the most important part of the the whole overall process. At this point I will go to small open mic nights and share songs and gauge a reaction from the audience.

“Because of this process, I’ve definitely found it difficult to build a consistent fanbase, however the following that I do have are pretty dope.”

Kupid The King can be found on Twitter @KupidVal and Instagram @kupidval