It seems the world wakes up to a new face of Afrobeats on a daily bases. With a surge of new talent and hypnotizing sounds, the genre is undoubtedly rising in the ranks and spreading its magic amongst the masses. With that said, a new artist is making a debut and her name is Cuppy.
Born Florence Ifeoluwa Otedola in Epe, a small town right outside of Lagos, Nigeria, Cuppy filled her world with sounds and colors. At 13-years-old she moved to London, where music provided her comfort in a land far from home, “Music was really my Savior.”
From there, her ears traveled the distance to take her back home. “I was always listening to music from back home, so a lot of classic Afropop songs.” Once acclimated, she found the UK to have something she’d quite enjoy. “When I came to the UK funky house was huge! It was like a nice tribal fusion of house and I guess funky beats and I just loved the scene. It was so positive then.”
From there, Cuppy held tight to her roots while sprinkling the new sounds into her everyday life. As she got older, her passion for music grew immensely as she became a praised DJ with sets in London, Durban, and Mexico City. But in 2015 she found herself further from home as she studied for a master's in music business at New York University. There she interned at Roc Nation and began to get in touch with the artist she'd soon become.
“Those years I wasn't really Cuppy. I was the intern, I was the student, I was learning everything. I was behind the scenes.” Those years, however, keep her tight today. “I am forever grateful for it because it's made me a stronger artist.”
“I mean when you look at the way I do my business and the way I like to structure myself, it's evident that I've learned. I think also the way I put value on creativity and the way I interact with my other peers on a very professional level. I realized that I'm not a musician, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a product that can be commercialized on whatever scale and that business side forever just echoes through my brand,” she details. “I'm so many things, I'm a philanthropist I'm a curator. I've never been one to stick to one path because there's so many ways to expand, there's so many ways to express.”
And if it’s one thing she does, it’s express. Her exterior, brown and lovely, sporting pink hair in various styles and looks that often show off her heritage, Cuppy is a walking expression of confidence, energy, and poise. Her debut album Original Copy is also full of expression as she shares the sides of her some don’t believe exist, “My album is explicit and a lot of people don't even think Cuppy knows what a swear word is,” she laughs.
“I think I have kind of presented to the world as this bubblegum character and I love my album cover, I think that represents what Cuppy is. [But] it’s a strong woman behind this mask and that's what I'm trying to tell through my music. I'm really trying to be me.”
Who is she you ask? As she would tell it, she’s just like you.
“I'm a young woman on this global quest and I'm confused, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm a bad bitch and sometimes I'm spoiled, sometimes I'm super responsible. I just want people to know that I am a human being.”
The 12-song album features artists like Wyclef Jean, Teni, Rema, and more. Debuting August 21, Original Copy combines Afrobeats, Afropop, UK Afroswing, trap, and hip-hop sounds. A woman of the world, her inspiration stems from her travels, and her choice to stay rooted was as effortless as breathing.
“I consider myself three different worlds but I equally identify with these three different cases. So it's literally putting a bit of me,” she explains. “I think my sound is a fusion. I like to call my sound “Neo-Afrobeats” because it's Afrobeats but, you know, kind of inspired by all my different sub-genre experiences. I've lived in New York, so I love hip hop. I've lived in London, I love house. So everywhere I go, I try and get inspiration from all these other sounds.”
Holding herself accountable, she recorded in various African countries allowing each to feed her energy to produce exactly what she felt in that moment. “I think recording in Africa was very important to me. I recorded in three different cities, Lagos, Nigeria, Accra, Ghana, and also in Cape Town, South Africa. And I think just the energy I get when I'm there's, it’s just,” pausing for emphasis, “It's like no other.”
For Cuppy, Lagos allowed her to feel herself. The confidence and comfort she feels in her hometown allowed her to push the limits and talk her shit. The peace that can be found in Cape Town gave her the calm to open her heart and soul, letting her vulnerabilities take control of the mood as she slowed the pace for songs like “Karma.”
“I mean it's my first ever album like, it's kind of crazy. I’m nervous and excited at the same time, so many mixed emotions but I can’t wait for people to see how much I've grown. Where I'm from people know me and it seems to have preferred me as a DJ and I'm here to show them that I'm more than that.”
“The hardest part of being an entrepreneur is you have to make decisions with your head, and being an artist you make decisions with your heart,” she says of the transition from DJ and business owner to an artist. “I'm constantly torn between the two, you know not every business decision is great for my creativity. The more experience I'm getting the more difficult I find it to run as a business or to do certain things by the book because I have a certain vision for myself and it's hard because you want to express it.”
“The album's called Original Copy [because] I kind of got tired of people telling me what I should be, who I should work with and I just wanted to be my original unapologetic self,” Cuppy clarified. After 27 years on this planet, her formal introduction as the artist is powered by a blessing and a gift for Brown skin girls worldwide.
“This is me becoming an artist. I want there to be someone, maybe a little girl in Africa that hears the song and feels like she can do what she wants to do because Cuppy did it because Cuppy showed that there's nothing wrong with being an artist. There's nothing wrong with being a strong woman that wants to make decisions early in life. There's nothing wrong with being unapologetic. There's nothing wrong with moving to a new place and sounding different, looking different. That's what it's all about,” she affirmed.
“I refuse to change who I am. I've DJ’d for presidents, I've been able to do amazing things without changing who I am, without sounding different or changing my views or beliefs. I just want to encourage people to have originality.”
Ending with a play on her album title, “We were all born original so we should never die as a copy.”
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