Among the many curiosities of royal life, few were as quietly surprising as the late Duchess of Kent’s affection for gangsta rap – a musical enthusiasm that sat far from public expectation yet perfectly captured her lifelong devotion to sound in all its forms.
After Princess Anne declined the chance to learn how to rap this week, we take a look back at a rare interview the Duchess of Kent gave in August 2022 where she revealed that she counted American rappers Ice Cube and Eminem among her favourite artists.
“I just love music,” she told Camilla Tominey of the Sunday Telegraph at the time. “Something that catches my ear on the radio – I don’t really listen to records. If it makes my feet tap, then I’m happy.”
She added, with characteristic warmth: “I’ll listen to anything. I even like beatboxing.”
The confession delighted royal watchers, not least because it emerged from one of the family’s most musically accomplished figures. Though she admitted she could not always recall the names of modern artists, she spoke with unmistakable fondness of rap’s rhythm, energy and emotional force.
The Duchess, who died in 2025 aged 90, had stepped away from official royal duties more than two decades earlier, choosing a life devoted almost entirely to music education. After withdrawing from public engagements in 2002, she lived quietly, appearing only occasionally – usually in connection with musical causes close to her heart.
Her commitment to teaching was long-standing. In Hull and London she worked with disadvantaged children, and for a period even rented a modest flat where she gave piano lessons. Music, she believed, was not simply an art but a means of empowerment.
That belief stemmed from her own upbringing. As a schoolgirl she learned the piano, violin and organ, and narrowly missed securing a place at the Royal Academy of Music – a near-miss that nonetheless shaped the course of her life.
In an earlier interview in 2011, she reflected on music’s transformative power. “When I was teaching, the first thing I noticed was how music stimulated confidence and self-belief,” she said. “I began to see it happening all the time.”
Not all of her pupils became musicians, she noted, but many found the assurance to pursue paths previously closed to them. “Some joined the Army, some went to university – things they might not otherwise have done.”
“I have always loved talent,” she said. “That tickle up the neck when you see it.”
It was that openness – to potential, to rhythm, to unexpected harmony – that made her fondness for rap entirely consistent with her character. To the Duchess of Kent, music was never about genre or tradition, but about feeling.
