ROMderful

Rommel Donald was born and grew up in Birmingham, England.[1] As a child, he learned how to make beats and play multiple instruments, including the guitar, bass guitar, violin, and drums.[2] He was also childhood friends with fellow artist and future collaborator, KayFaraway.[1] He drew inspiration from church music, early 2000s R&B,[2] and video game soundtracks. In his teenage years, he was a member of a death metal band.[1] He would later attend university while also working on his music. During his second semester of university in 2015, however, Donald opted to drop out and focus on music full time.[2]

Donald began producing music under the stage name ROM (or R.O.M.) in 2015.[2] In late 2015, he collaborated with DEFFIE on a remix of Pharrell's "Frontin'".[3] In early 2016, he released the track "I Just Want You To Know" which sampled the Snoop Dogg song, "Beautiful".[4] In March of that year, he released a 3-track EP as part of his record label Soulection's White Label series. That collection contained the song "You Love Em" featuring Emmavie.[2][5] Later that year, he earned a placement on the remix album for GoldLink's And After That, We Didn't Talk, reworking the track, "Late Night".[6] He also remixed tracks from Raye ("I, U, Us")[3] and Linden Jay ("Lose Again" featuring Shola Ama).[7] In December 2016, ROM released a track called "Kiss and Tell" featuring the vocals of Naji.[8]

In 2017, he adopted his current stage name, ROMderful. He also released several new tracks including "Only One" (with Tendayi)[9] and "SoReal?" (with KayFaraway).[10] Additionally, he produced the Jean Deaux record, "Wikipedia",[11] and appeared on Kitsuné's Afterwork Vol 1 compilation album with the track "BeThere4Me" (featuring KayFaraway).[12] In 2018, ROMderful continued working with Jean Deaux, producing her song "Energy" which was the lead single off her EP, Krash.[13] That year, he was also signed to Same Plate Entertainment, a joint venture label with Sony Music.[14]

In March 2019, he released a collaborative EP, Hours After Midnight, with KayFaraway.[15] The following month, he released his debut studio album, Press L to Continue,[16] on Same Plate/Sony.[1] The album was preceded by the singles "Run Tings" (with Shakka and featuring Dounia)[17] and "1 Missed Call" (featuring Dean and Tabber).[18] The album also featured guest appearances from TOBi, Jay Prince, Devin Tracy, Wade, and KayFaraway. Vocals from ROMderful himself also appeared on the album.[1] Music videos for "Run Tings"[19] and "Tired of the Games" (featuring TOBi) premiered after the album's release.[20] ROMderful also produced the Duckwrth track "KING KING" released in May 2019[21] and the Jean Deaux track, "Anytime" (featuring Kehlani) released in June 2019.[22]

• ROMderful on SoundCloud