From a gospel choir in Brixton to the world stage of jazz – exploring the fabled rise of a true musician

“As long as I can remember, I’ve only ever wanted to be a musician. And because I’m really, really stubborn, I never let anyone talk me out of it,” Raye recalls, laughing loudly, something she does often and wholeheartedly when you speak with her. Her voice sounds like long nights, and fierce passion. And even though she joins the interview via screen from her London apartment, her nervous, restless energy is palpable.

“An artist must always be allowed to challenge prevailing opinions,” the artiste says, suddenly serious, and it’s clear she never shies away from a challenge. Raye was born in 1997 in Tooting, South London, as Rachel Agatha Keen, the first of four children to a Swiss mother with Ghanaian roots and a British father. Her talent stood out early. She sang in a church choir,learned to play the piano, and began
writing her first songs at the age of ten. At fourteen, she was accepted into London’s BRIT School, a kind
of Hogwarts for young pop prodigies, whose alumni include Adele, Amy Winehouse, Katie Melua, and
Lola Young. After two years, Raye dropped out.

Among the Stars

International breakthrough: In 2024, Raye performed at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival on Lake Geneva. After that, everything happened very quickly, and Brit Awards came pouring in.

Before her debut: Prior to releasing her own debut, Raye wrote songs for superstars such as John Legend and Beyoncé (above, during her Renaissance World Tour), yet she always wanted to be on stage herself.

“I felt constrained!” she explains, amused. In any case, there was little left for her to learn – in the years before, she had spent every free minute writing songs and figuring out how music is produced in the studio.

“Pop songs are like mathematics, there’s always some detail you can improve,” she says. But only on her own terms, in her own rhythm. Like so many truly creative people, she has remained a free spirit. Fitting into systems has never come easily to her. The very idea of getting up before three in the afternoon repels her. “I try to get by on less sleep, but it just doesn’t work,” she says and bursts out laughing.

Just over ten years ago, when Raye was 17, she uploaded a few of her songs to SoundCloud. A few months later, she signed a record deal with the major label Polydor. What seemed like a dream come true turned out to be a mistake, though the beginning felt promising. Raye released songs that made the charts and was passed around by her bosses as “exceptionally cool” to other artists – touring with Jess Glynne, working on a remix for Rita Ora, or in the studio with David Guetta. But it was never about her own music. And that became her problem.

At some point, she had become a popular permanent guest on other people’s projects. Whenever she asked the executives when her own debut album would finally happen, they grew evasive. This went on for seven years – an eternity in pop time.

One evening, Raye had had enough. Sitting on her bed, frustrated, she decided to vent her anger on Twitter. “I’ve had a four-album deal since 2014! And I haven’t even been allowed to release one. I’m so done with being a polite pop star,” she told her followers. Shortly afterward, Raye no longer had a record contract.

Of course she had been nervous, she recalls, but she also felt free, self-believed and free. “You have to love your art, otherwise nothing else makes sense!”

From Nina Simone, she learned to be fearless, as much as one can be. Since the dawn of the music industry, there have always been artists who felt uncomfortable within it and eventually decided to challenge the system. In more recent pop history, these were titans like Prince and George Michael. In recent years, however, more and more young female artists have refused to accept the fine print of record contracts. Like Kate Bush, who made it clear from the start that she would work only by her own rules. Or Adele, who stipulated in her very first contract exactly what she was, and wasn’t, willing to do. Or Taylor Swift, who was so outraged when her early work was sold from one label to another that she simply re-recorded it, pointedly calling it Taylor’s Version, to reclaim control.

Among the most important lessons Raye learned at the BRIT School was how the business works. So she set out without a label, as an independent artist, and put everything on the line with her debut album My 21st Century Blues. The rest is history.

That Escapism, the album’s massive global hit, had previously been deemed “not good enough” by her former label has surely given some music executives pause. Raye had more than enough songs after all those years of being held back, and plenty of themes close to her heart. “Take good care of yourself when you’re trying to find your place in the music industry,” she says seriously. And she knows what she’s talking about – Raye has experienced harassment by colleagues, as well as struggles with other things. But all that is long behind her. The dark days are over.

Raye says she has never felt better than she does now. At last, her career is truly taking off, on her terms, under her own direction. She has powerfully demonstrated that young artists don’t have to accept everything, and she embodies the bold self-confidence of the generation spanning Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, and Taylor Swift – a level of assertiveness the music industry has never seen before.

Now, the musician only chooses projects that genuinely excite her. Most recently, she released the song Suzanne, produced with superstar producer Mark Ronson for the luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet.

It’s easy to imagine Ronson, whom Raye greatly admires, also joining her on her second album. That record is said to be almost finished and is expected later than next summer.

She’s equally adept at keeping her private life private. The only thing that seems certain is that her relationship with hip-hop titan Drake didn’t last. And she recently clarified that she is indeed just friends with Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton. Whatever the truth may be, one thing is clear – Raye’s fairy tale has only just begun.