“A lot of guys don’t open up”: Kidwild, the British rapper not afraid to bare his soul | culture

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the next Their first mixtape is planned for the spring

It’s a measure of how quickly Keaton Edmund, aka Kidwild, has worked his way through a performing arts career that the rapper describes as being in the “comeback part of my life” at the age of 20.

As a child he acted opposite Beverley Knight in The Bodyguard in the West End and toured the production throughout China. He had a major role in four seasons of the CBBC football drama Jimmy Johnson and appeared in Casualty. You can see him dancing in the video to Stormzy’s 2017 single Vossi Bop, a baby-faced trickster swinging a baseball bat at the camera lens. All of this made him grow up quickly. “I was spending time naked, alone, with older people. So I just started to see life for what it is. You have time to sit with your thoughts.”

boredom during covid, He asked for a microphone and began crafting his own rap songs. Half a decade later, millions of listeners are now drawn to his candid telling of his life’s struggles. But not until after a false start.

By 17, He was signed to a major label, Atlantic Records – so young that his mother had to accompany him to signings. But after Edmund released two clips, the person who signed him left, leaving him in limbo. “For everything to become cool, you have to start reconsidering yourself,” he says, speaking with expansive, gentle gestures on the Guardian’s office sofa, his features still almost as boyish as in Stormzy’s video. “It’s kind of insulting, because you’re supposed to be the next star, they said, and then you’re there.” After the third track “didn’t live up to their expectations – I don’t know what their expectations were”, it was dropped.

But this newfound freedom made him feel “like I got out of prison.” He felt charged with the prospect of pursuing a career on his own. When his self-released song Indecisive started gaining more attention in October 2024 — it has since been streamed 29 million times on Spotify — he was visiting his family in St. Lucia. “Everything I wanted happened, while I was sitting at my grandmother’s house in the village.” He returned home, then a day later went into the studio and wrote “in the flow” of “Redemption” — one of the biggest British rap tracks of 2025. “How can I stop when I’ve come this far? / Smiling on the outside, scarred deep inside,” he said. Later in the year, in a brilliant collaboration with JBee If I Lose, he tells his lover: “I just want you to hold me.”

Vulnerabilities in rap have been on the rise over the past decade, but Kidweld is particularly vulnerable due to his atmospheric, drill-accompanied beats. Is it taboo for men to be open with their emotions? “This is true, and you can see it in the suicide rates among men compared to women,” he says. “A lot of guys don’t open up. With songs where I’m really vulnerable, people message me and say, ‘I relate to this so much.’ If they’re one of those people who doesn’t like to talk about their feelings, at least they have Kidwild to relate to.”

The strongest of these songs is his latest single, “Forgive Me,” which talks about his relationship with his father, who was imprisoned for a number of years. “I was calling your phone, and I got no reception / The only picture I got is of me in the reception,” Kidwild sings sadly. “I remember the first time I got a call from prison,” he says. “I didn’t want to talk. I said hello, and that was it. She just gave the phone back to my mom.” He spits on the track: “Is it a crime if I say I’m glad he was sentenced?” But after five years of no contact, they began to reconcile. “When we talk about it now, I laugh because, now that I’m older, I understand life more. I see why I’m angry.”

The upcoming mixtape is “a chance to speak my truth” and chart his difficult youth. “There’s a lot of music now, and there’s not a lot of themes, it’s just like…” Vibes? “Feelings, yes – and that’s good! I love feeling music. But I wanted to add something different, go deeper.”