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