On a warm Cape Town afternoon, Lynn Cupido is somewhere between tending to her indoor plants and building worlds out of sound. The two might seem worlds apart, but for the 28-year-old singer-songwriter, model, and dancer, both are acts of care — both demand patience, intention, and an openness to growth.
Cupido’s music, especially her 2024 debut EP 7EVEN, is rooted in that kind of emotional labour. Released under A.R.T.S Entertainment, the seven-track project traces the seven stages of grief with a rare willingness to show the messy edges. “For me, storytelling and vulnerability go hand in hand,” she says. “I can’t tell an honest story if I’m not willing to show the raw parts of myself.”
Those raw parts aren’t just cathartic outpourings — they’re deliberate bridges between artist and listener. Cupido describes writing 7EVEN as “processing real emotions in real time,” a process that meant revisiting hurt, taking accountability, and still finding “the light at the end of it.” But the moment the music leaves her hands, she says, it stops belonging only to her: “Once the music is out there, it belongs to the listener too — and my hope is that my openness gives them permission to face their own emotions and heal in their own way.”
That openness didn’t come easy. The turning point was an uncomfortable one: “I realised that healing isn’t just about what others did to me — it’s also about owning the parts I played in their story.” For Cupido, that meant looking squarely at her own patterns and the ways she may have hurt others. She calls 7EVEN “a bridge between self-awareness and self-compassion,” a body of work born from guilt but resolved in forgiveness.
Her creative language is multi-dimensional. “My sound, my visuals, and my spirit are all connected — they’re different languages telling the same story,” she explains. Grief stripped away the performance of living up to others’ expectations, leaving behind an intentional artist whose choices — from the warmth of her arrangements to the palette of her cover art — are tethered to her truth. On stage, that authenticity translates into an energy that feels both grounded and unguarded, defying the narrow boxes the South African music industry can sometimes impose on women.
Outside the studio, healing takes shape in quieter rituals. Cupido calls nature her “quiet therapist,” filling her spaces with greenery as a daily reminder that “growth takes time and care.” During the making of 7EVEN, she leaned into movement — dancing alone when emotions swelled too heavy — and meditation practices that steadied her breath. These habits didn’t just support the work; they ran parallel to it, allowing her to process before she performed.
Sonically, she treats genre like a painter’s set of pigments. “Each one brings out a different shade of emotion,” she says. Afro-fusion, R&B, soul — each serves a purpose in her narratives. House, the music she grew up loving in Kimberley, still holds a special place, but Cupido refuses to be fenced in. “The song always decides what it wants to be — I just follow its lead.”
That instinctive flow mirrored her own relocation. Moving from Kimberley to Cape Town wasn’t just a shift in scenery — it was, in her words, “a leap into the unknown.” The ocean and cultural mash-up of the city gave her space to “soften while still growing stronger.” Rebirth became more than a lyrical theme; it was a lived reality. But Kimberley remains a constant presence in her work: “I want to represent where I come from and shine like the diamond that I am.”
In a music landscape where vulnerability can be commodified, Cupido’s approach feels rooted in something sturdier — a belief that honesty is more powerful than polish, and that art is as much about tending to the self as it is about producing a sound. Listening to her, you get the sense that every note, like every leaf in her living room, has been carefully nurtured.
And maybe that’s the quiet magic of Lynn Cupido: she heals in public not to perform the process, but to remind the rest of us that growth — like grief — is something we all move through, one stage, one song, one green shoot at a time.
