NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

T&T pro­duc­er and singer-song­writer Kur­tis “Lon­don Fu­ture” Wells feels grate­ful and ec­sta­t­ic af­ter work­ing with Ko­re­an megas­tars BTS. He co-wrote two songs on their lat­est al­bum, ARI­RANG.

The al­bum was of­fi­cial­ly re­leased on March 20 and de­buted at num­ber one on the Bill­board 200 chart. This is the sev­enth BTS al­bum to achieve such a feat. Wells co-wrote “FYA”, track four, and “They Don’t Know ’Bout Us”, track 11.

The 34-year-old La Hor­quet­ta na­tive boasts an ex­ten­sive lo­cal cat­a­logue. He has pro­duced sev­er­al hits, in­clud­ing “Like Ah Boss” and “E.P.I.C.” by Machel Mon­tano, “Too Re­al” by Ker­win Du Bois, “Bub­ble On A DJ” by Swap­pi, “Lon­er” by Lyrikal, “Tin­go” by Nes­sa Prep­py, among oth­ers.

As he sought to fur­ther ex­plore mu­sic at an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, he moved to Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia, in the US. He al­so briefly lived in Ger­many. “It’s very in­spir­ing to trav­el,” he told Guardian Me­dia. “I would rec­om­mend any cre­ative trav­el as much as pos­si­ble, be­cause you al­ways find new things to be in­spired by and meet new peo­ple every­where.”

He said it al­so brings ma­jor op­por­tu­ni­ties. He has worked with big names such as US DJs/pro­duc­ers Dip­lo and Skrillex, US rap­per Lil Ba­by, and Cana­di­an singer Jessie Reyez. Now, five-time Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed BTS can be added to that list.

He said it was last year when he re­ceived a call from his la­bel, Pulse Mu­sic Group, in­form­ing him of an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on the al­bum. “I was very hap­py be­cause, ob­vi­ous­ly, these guys are a big deal. So last sum­mer, they were all in LA and rent­ed out one of the best stu­dios for about a month. We did about six ses­sions in to­tal.”

Laugh­ing as he re­called the first ses­sion, he said, “I didn’t know they were go­ing to be there in the room, in the flesh.” He al­so re­unit­ed with Dip­lo, who ex­ec­u­tive-pro­duced the al­bum.

Wells said that while he writes songs every day, he knew the group was look­ing for some­thing “dif­fer­ent”, but they were not quite sure what that was. “So it’s not like you’re fol­low­ing a par­tic­u­lar script,” he said. “It was a tough one, but in the end, I was sat­is­fied.”

When he learnt his con­tri­bu­tions had made the fi­nal cut, he could hard­ly be­lieve it. “They had to tell me about four times be­fore it hit me. It’s life-chang­ing stuff, you know?” The al­bum has been re­ceiv­ing high praise. He added that his five-year-old daugh­ter is a huge K-pop (Ko­re­an pop) fan, so she is al­so hap­py and ex­cit­ed.

He made an In­sta­gram post to share the news and thanked the group for trust­ing him and the rest of the team with their vi­sion. “It was a plea­sure writ­ing with you guys… Big up to every­one in­volved,” he wrote. And BTS fans—or ARMYs, as they call them­selves—from T&T were quick to share their ex­cite­ment. “That’s so cool, bro. As a fel­low Tri­ni ARMY, thank you so much for writ­ing with BTS. Tru­ly, thank you so much,” one In­sta­gram user wrote. “Su­per proud Tri­ni ARMY here,” an­oth­er said.

In ad­di­tion to writ­ing for oth­ers, Wells has been build­ing his so­lo cat­a­logue as an artiste. He has re­leased songs such as “High­er Self”, “Para­mount” and “Start A Fire”. “Over time, trav­el­ling and work­ing, I start­ed to dive in­to the song­writ­ing as­pect of mu­sic. I’ve been a pro­duc­er, song­writer… When you put your 10,000 hours in, you nat­u­ral­ly progress to the next thing, and that was be­com­ing an artiste.”

On us­ing his re­al name as a per­former and song­writer, rather than his so­bri­quet, he ex­plained, “I think once I start­ed to make mu­sic that was a bit more true to my heart, I felt as though I need­ed to stand on that.”

For this achieve­ment, along with all oth­ers, Wells said he feels grate­ful, es­pe­cial­ly as he has been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly for years. “They al­ways say the ones who make it are the ones who nev­er stop. So it feels good to know that that’s ac­tu­al­ly true.”