I’m Cheryl Tugade. I’m a rapper, singer, songwriter and producer based in Singapore. I started writing music when I was 12, and now I have three singles on Spotify and I’m signed with a record label in the Philippines.

One of my biggest accomplishments was earlier this year when I was nominated for the Youth Music Awards, for a song that I produced and wrote all by myself. My latest song was also featured on New Music Friday Philippines which is pretty cool. All the 3 songs that I currently have on Spotify are all really different so I hope to release an EP in the future so people can have a better idea of the kind of music that I want to write.

My biggest challenge so far is just knowing that there are so many talented people out there trying to stand out. But this pushes me to keep practicing and to keep improving, eventhough sometimes it is very difficult to not compare yourself.

I think mental health is something that is very important right now, especially for those around my age, but there is definitely a lot of work being done to address it as it is often misunderstood. There’s a song I wrote called ‘Not Alone’ that I wrote for one of my friends who suffers from depression and I want that song to kind of let people in that situation know that they are not alone.

When I started out, I would tell myself to “don’t be afraid of how much you love music”, because at the start I was very unsure about taking it further and putting serious effort in but there is really no reason not to.