New Zealand musician Kings shares emotional moment he sang for dying fan in hospital

• Kings helped a terminally ill fan die peacefully by performing at his hospital bedside.
• The experience profoundly impacted Kings, changing his understanding of music’s significance to others.
• Kings is known for his 2016 hit Don’t Worry Bout’ It, which topped charts for 33 weeks.

New Zealand hip-hop artist Kings has opened up about the emotional moment he helped a fan with terminal cancer die peacefully with a performance by his hospital bed.

The Auckland-based musician, whose real name is Kingdon Chapple-Wilson, shared the story in a recent episode of Beyond The Beat, a new short series celebrating Kiwi artists for New Zealand Music Month.

Kings said the fan, a young boy from Christchurch, had originally invited him to perform at his birthday party.

“I was like, ‘Yo, I’ll be there.’ And I couldn’t make the date, so I ended up not going,” Kings said.

A year or two later, Kings received a call from the boy’s family.

“[They said], ‘Hey, that kid who wanted you to come, he’s dying, he’s got cancer.’ And I was just like, ‘Holy s***,’” Kings recalled.

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Wanting to honour the young fan’s final wish, Kings flew to Christchurch to see him.

“I didn’t realise how dire the situation actually was. He was on his deathbed, in a hospital bed.”

Led to the room by the family, Kings performed one of his songs at his fan’s side. In a moment that’s stuck with him ever since, the boy passed away as the musician was singing.

“I was weeping. The family was like, ‘You’ve crossed him to the other side’, ‘Thank you so much’.”

The experience changed Kings’ understanding of his music’s impact on others.

“That was the first time I ever thought, ‘Oh, I’m way bigger than I thought in terms of what a song is to someone, to what it was to me’,” he said.

“Holy s***, music is so much bigger than I ever thought it was.”

Kings is best-known for his 2016 song Don’t Worry Bout’ It, which spent 33 weeks at the top of the New Zealand charts and remains the longest-running number one single in the country.

The track was also the best-selling single in 2016 from a local artist and has since accumulated more than 26 million streams on Spotify.

Kings has released music under his own label, Arch Angel Records, since 2018.