South-East London’s Joel Culpepper shares his latest track ‘Tears of a Crown’, which premiered as Annie Mac’s ‘Hottest Record In The World’. The release comes ahead of Joel’s debut performance on Later...with Jools Holland, airing 10PM this Friday, June 18th on BBC Two. ‘Tears of a Crown’ follows ‘Black Boy’, Joel’s recent track inspired by his time as a Learning Mentor, which The Guardian called “a fortifying, accessible song of great summertime joy." Joel’s debut album Sgt Culpepper, out July 23rd via his own imprint Pepper Records and Mr Bongo, in partnership with Believe, pre-order here. Joel will also be performing an album launch show at London’s Lafayette on Thursday, July 29th (tickets here) and has announced a national tour this November, more information below.

Working on ‘Tears of a Crown’ with executive producer Swindle (Ezra Collective, Mahalia) and legendary pop producer Guy Chambers, the experience felt like a meeting of minds for Joel, or in his words, "pop, grime and soul coming together - they're like my Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton." Of the song's evolution, Joel explains "This song was originally an intro to the album. Myself and Swindle felt we only needed a taste of this to start the album, but Guy Chambers was adamant it was a full song. He organised another full studio day for us to get it right. Swindle and I reluctantly agreed and went through the motions thinking we would just revert it back to an intro after. Guy started the song again from scratch, and suddenly me and Swindle were schooled in how to finish the song. He could see on our faces that he had got it right, clapped and said “now we have a song!”