Artist Profile: Kurupi
Kurupi, the Latin punk-rap artist from Northern California, has spent years chasing an intersection between genres that feel almost innate to his creative drive, melding the aggression and capabilities of emotional expression of two separate genres into a cohesive, instrumentation-driven sound.
As a child, Kurupi gained an appreciation of music from his father, who is a guitarist and was majorly into the West Coast grunge scene as a teenager. While, as a result of the natural reversion kids have to their parents’ music, Kurupi initially shied away from that genre as a whole, he discovered his own love for music, funnily enough, through hearing a System of a Down song while playing guitar hero.
From there, Kurupi picked up the guitar, pursuing an obsession with blown-out riffs and chugging rhythms through the early days of his journey into music.
As he entered high school, he aimed to start a band that would allow him to pursue this sound in a group setting, and, over time, he found a group of friends that had similar tastes in music. Although he was not the vocalist for the group, he was the primary songwriter, and, as he honed his craft more and more, his unique sound developed.
“In the first version of [Kurupi], I wasn't doing anything vocally. I was writing all the songs, but we had a singer. I would just write the songs and bring the lyrics. It ended up being a thing where he wasn't coming from rap at all, and he would just be like, ‘It feels like you're trying to make me rap. What you're writing is weird to sing’.”
As Kurupi eventually stripped down to a solo act and its originator moved down to Los Angeles, it began to find its form.
His album that was released last year, No Esperes, represents both his initial wanderings into and the fullest representations of this sound, encapsulating the mix of emotions he felt as he moved out on his own and began to handle a turbulent world as an adult.
He wrote most of the songs on that album around 2020, but years of polishing left the record in a place to truly be an introduction to Kurupi’s unique emotional potency.
“I don't necessarily see myself as that aggressive. The lyrics aren't necessarily as super aggressive as they are just like, screaming into the void and processing death. But I would say there was something special in… just trying to get them down and living in an apartment where I couldn't really be loud and living in a new town and working graveyard shifts that was definitely like an outlet to push those feelings out.”
However, his next project, 2025 EP “¡fruta!”, came from happier circumstances. After moving to L.A. with childhood friend and producer Cudimitsu, they would hold sessions with other rappers and musicians in the L.A scene accompanied by cookouts at their house, and from that positive energy came a collection of tracks that express a sense of joy and celebration in daily life: something that Kurupi feels his community needs given current socio-political circumstances.
His upcoming project, Voyager 20XX, is still largely under wraps, but it will take a more conceptual, sci-fi driven route in correlation with a video game that Kurupi is in the process of developing.
Yet, no matter what direction he takes next, Kurupi’s genre-blended sound will continue to develop, and, as he continues to push the envelope of his niche, he will be one to watch in the West Coast rap scene.
