When Raye climbed to primary with “Escapism” earlier this month, it wasn’t just deserved, but deliciously ironic. The wildly talented singer-songwriter spent seven years on a serious label chasing hits that got here, all too often, on the expense of her own musical identity. At an intimate gig in London last October, she sang her massive 2021 house banger “Bed”, a collaboration with DJ-producers Joel Corry and David Guetta that’s now nudging 400 million Spotify streams, after telling the audience first: “It’s not my favourite song, however it did great for my checking account.” Few musicians are ever this mischievous or candid.

So now, it’s even sweeter for Raye to be toasting her first-ever chart-topper 18 months after she left that label to turn out to be an independent artist. Her debut album My twenty first Century Blues, a searingly and at times shockingly honest collection of soulful confessionals, is able to be shipped from the vinyl factory. Nobody could mistake the stinging self-recrimination of “Escapism” for the naggingly catchy hook she sang on “Bed”: “I got a bed, but I’d moderately be in yours tonight.” A decidedly darker offering, “Escapism” went viral on TikTok because of its ominous, bass-heavy beat and lyrics about self-medicating after a break-up. “I don’t trust any of those bitches I’m with at the back of the taxi sniffin’ cocaine,” Raye sings on the pre-chorus.

A day before it hits the highest spot, at her music-filled house in south London, the 25-year-old has a spirited response to anyone who suggests she bought her TikTok streams. “Shut the fuck up!” says the lady born Rachel Agatha Keen in nearby Tooting. “You may’t pay for that [kind of] exposure; it just happens.” Still, Raye admits the song’s global success has type of blindsided her – “Escapism”, which features US rapper 070 Shake, has since climbed to number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. “It appears like I’m in some type of dream, trance-like reality,” she says with widening eyes. “I said to certainly one of my team originally of the album campaign: ‘Like, imagine if certainly one of these songs went to primary.’ Then we just checked out one another and burst out laughing! And now it’s happened. That’s fucked up!”

“It appears like I’m in some type of dream, trance-like reality. I said to certainly one of my team originally of the album campaign: ‘Like, imagine if certainly one of these songs went to primary.’ … And now it’s happened. That’s fucked up!” – Raye

At this point, it’s helpful to leap back to June 2021, when Raye sowed the seeds for the creative renaissance she is having fun with today. In a post that shook Pop Twitter and the British music industry, she called out Polydor, her label of seven years, for refusing to release her debut album. “I’ve done all the pieces they asked me, I switched genres,” she wrote, referring to the best way she was remodelled as a mainstream dance artist making bops for Love Island and business radio. “I’m done being a polite pop star,” she added defiantly. Three weeks later, after it became clear their working relationship was untenable, Raye thanked Polydor for allowing her to make a “graceful smooth exit” from this prolonged period of ​​major label purgatory.

During her Polydor years, Raye racked up nine Top 40 hits with earworms including “You Don’t Know Me”, a collaboration with British DJ-producer Jax Jones, and “Secrets”, which teamed her with Kosovo-Albanian dance star Regard. She has previously admitted she became a “rent-a-verse” by jumping on other artists’ tracks, an exchange that tended to profit her male collaborators greater than her. A few of Raye’s major label music was excellent – her 2020 mini-album Euphoric Sad Songs already appears like a lost classic – however it didn’t necessarily represent her. At any time when an Uber driver would look her up on Spotify, she would tell them apologetically: “Just keep in mind that this song could be very that. But sooner or later, I’m going to make music that’s more like this.”

“I’m literally singing about how I used to wear three pairs of Spanx under my dress so my stomach wouldn’t come out And the way this ugly, ugly pressure morphed into an eating disorder. It’s pretty visceral” – Raye

Striking out on her own over the past 18 months has been enriching and exhausting in equal measure. “I believed I worked hard before, however it’s on a complete other level now,” she says. “I’m a control freak anyway, but there’s a lot positive print and detail to each aspect of being an independent artist.” Raye has two phones – one for communicating, the opposite showing her streaming figures – and readily admits her social life “doesn’t currently exist”. But, she adds brightly, it’s all value it because she’s finally about to drop My twenty first Century Blues, a spiky and uncompromising debut album without an oz. of self-censorship. After I ask whether she thinks she could have released it on a serious, she replies bluntly: “No.”

Raye says she wasn’t afraid to put in writing about “heavy subjects” in an “explicit” way, and cites the album track “Body Dysmorphia” as a chief example. “I’m literally singing about how I used to wear three pairs of Spanx under my dress so my stomach wouldn’t come out,” she says. “And the way this ugly, ugly pressure morphed into an eating disorder. It’s pretty visceral.” Raye isn’t exaggerating, but she also gave “Body Dysmorphia” a buoyant beat so its biting lyrics are easier to digest. “God knows how many individuals on the market are coping with this,” she says with an empathetic sigh. “But it surely’s not a cushty conversation to have. You may’t exit for a drink with friends and say: ’By the best way guys, I threw up all my food last night because I felt shit and had a binge.’ I do know because I struggled in silence.”

“My self-confidence, my self-worth and my trust in myself has improved tenfold – as has my joy. God, I’m just so a lot better than I used to be” – Raye

Equally visceral is “Ice Cream Man”, a heartbreaking ballad about Raye’s experiences of sexual assault, including an incident with an unnamed music producer that she has spoken about prior to now. “I felt his ice-cold hands, he should havе been arrested then,” she sings on the pre-chorus. “That song is so essential to me,” she says. “I’ve held on to a lot: the trauma, the PTSD, the panic attacks, the depression. All of the ways I used to be impacted by something as disgusting as what I’ve experienced. You recognize, it was exactly because it says within the lyrics. And I didn’t tell a soul.” Today, she simply describes this song as “medicine”. Putting it out is her “way of being loud – and brave – about something that I’ve been afraid of for therefore, so long”.

The album is certainly hard-hitting, however it also captures the infectiously fun side of Raye’s personality that lights up her live shows. On the flamenco-flecked “Flip a Switch”, she guarantees to “flip a activate a prick” who treated her badly. “You would like them songs as well!” she says with fun. “I play it when I want to feel like I’m a nasty bitch. It’s just one other form of medication, isn’t it?” She believes My twenty first Century Blues will proceed to alter perceptions of her after the “rent-a-verse” era. “I need people to consider me as a musician, a songwriter and an authentic artist, versus [just] a singer,” she says. And she or he is finished explaining herself to Uber drivers – they will play “Escapism” and listen to exactly who she is. “My self-confidence, my self-worth and my trust in myself has improved tenfold – as has my joy,” she says with a defiant smile. “God, I’m just so a lot better than I used to be.”

My twenty first Century Blues is released on February 3