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RAYE has had an incredible start to 2023. After her song "Escapism" featuring 070 Shake became a viral sensation across the globe late last year, she burst into the new year with her debut album My 21st Century Blues, which dropped in February. To celebrate, RAYE took over iHeartLand in Fortnite and on Roblox on Friday, March 3rd.
To get things started, the singer-songwriter hit the State Farm Park stage to give an intimate performance of "Escapism." With only a keyboard backing her up, RAYE showed off her dazzling voice with a soulful, stripped-down version of the hit. She was then joined by iHeartRadio's Emily Curl for an exclusive interview and got candid about her journey in the music industry.
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"It's nuts in so many ways," RAYE said of her success as a solo artist after rising to prominence through features and songwriting credits. "It's a milestone I always was waiting for the day to achieve. I think when you decide [to put out] an album, it's part of the experience. You imagine, 'What will my album be like? What will it sound like? When will it be out?' And now it is and I'm really proud of it and I've been receiving so much beautiful feedback about it," she said before admitting that she was a bit "overwhelmed" by the enthusiastic response, "but really grateful."
One of those enthusiastic responses came from none other than Adele. Curl wanted to know what was going through RAYE's mind when she found out the Grammy winner was a fan. She hilariously revealed, "Babe, I'm not going to lie. I was ordering a chicken curry and it wasn't arriving." Though she was a bit sad about her food that was never delivered, she went back inside to a friend telling her, "'Look! Adele's put you on her story.' ... I messaged the delivery people and I was like, 'It's okay, don't worry. Adele's streaming my album,'" she laughed.
Attention from music giants like Adele and "Escapism" becoming the soundtrack to hundreds of thousands of TikToks are the kinds of perks that were far away from RAYE's mind while crafting My 21st Century Blues. "The irony of the whole situation is that before releasing this new music, I set myself new boundaries and goals," she explained to Curl. "I didn't want to put any kind of pressure on myself about chart success or any kind of pressure on sales or statistics. I just wanted to make sure I loved the music I'm putting out, loved the visuals, and I'm proud of it. That's all that matters and then, bang! The opposite happened."
It would be easy to interpret the Britsh singer's rise to the top of the charts as an "overnight success" but as she explained to Curl, "my journey's just been not the simplest one at all." After deciding at just 10 years old that she was going to be a musician, she started writing songs for other artists and scored her first songwriting credits, and even signed a record deal when she was just 17. After about seven years with Polydor Records, "it just didn't work out," RAYE said. "I think, for me, I wanted to be an albums-based artist. I don't want to move, or chase, whatever. I just want to make music, music I love. That's all that should matter as a creative." After going independent a year and a half ago, RAYE took some time to recalibrate and got to work on releasing her debut album.
When Curl asked RAYE how she would define the genre of My 21st Century Blues, it brought the musician back to a common criticism she used to hear about her artistry. "A repetitive quote I always heard about me was I don't know who I am. I don't know what my identity is. It was really dangerous, toxic, counter-intuitive messaging. I'm of mixed heritage and I come from many different places. I was raised with many different cultures... Asking me to choose one thing for me personally— especially for my first body of work because it took so long— I couldn't do it," the singer, who was born in London to a Ghanaian-Swiss mother and an English father, shared. "So, I decided to rebel, hard, against those things I'd been told for so long and just put together a body of work with no sonic throughline."
RAYE reiterated that she's so proud that the album is "many different things." That pride also comes from the fact many of the album's songs have been with her for over five years. The second track, "Oscar Winning Tears," she wrote when she was 20— RAYE is 25 now— and "Ice Cream Man" was written when she was 19. "I've just been burning to put them out," she gushed. "So that's really exciting when a song can stand the test of time in your head and heart."
While RAYE is grateful for her recent success, her approach to her career hasn't changed. Less than a month after My 21st Century Blues dropped, she's already eager to work on her next album.
"I'm so excited to write my next one," she smiled. "I know this has only just come out but the freedom, creatively, I feel now. My 21st Century Blues is a collation of a lot of old songs. It's kind of like a mosaic to me. Like, broken fragments from different times in my life," she said before revealing that she already has "some feelings and intuitions in mind" for her next body of work. "I also really want to push myself out of my comfort zone. I want to be more involved in the production than I ever have. I'm really so excited about it. I just feel like there's no limit."