Raye: 'My drug use got pretty deep and really dangerous'

Raye has 1 of the astir triumphant 'told-you-so' stories of caller illustration history.

Signed to Polydor Records arsenic a teenager, she spent years connected pop's periphery, penning songs for Beyoncé and Little Mix, and lending her vocals to apical 10 hits by David Guetta and Jax Jones.

But her solo worldly ne'er scaled those heights and, successful 2021, she told fans her statement was refusing to merchandise her debut album.

Dozens of imaginable hits were "sat successful folders collecting dust", she said, portion others were being fixed distant to bigger stars "because I americium inactive awaiting confirmation that I americium bully enough".

"I'm done," she concluded, "being a polite popular star."

Sadly, her communicative is not unique. The euphony manufacture is littered with stories of artists (usually pistillate ones) who've been sidelined by their label, from Muna to Nina Nesbitt and adjacent Missy Elliot, whose archetypal album, with the R&B set Sista, remains unreleased.

But Raye (whose existent sanction is Rachel Keen) got the past laugh.

After her Instagram station went viral, the vocalist extricated herself from Polydor and struck retired arsenic an autarkic artist. Within 18 months, she had the biggest-selling azygous successful the UK.

Called Escapism, it's a beast of a song: A hard-hitting relationship of abusing drink, drugs and meaningless enactment to get implicit a break-up. Gritty and unglamorous, it's precisely the benignant of happening a large statement would recoil from releasing.

When it went to fig 1 successful January, it vindicated each content Raye ever had astir her music.

"It's conscionable superb erstwhile you get to beryllium radical wrong," she tells the BBC, hardly holding backmost tears, connected the day her illustration triumph is announced.

"It conscionable shows that you should backmost yourself, nary substance what radical archer you."

Escapism has present sold fractional a cardinal copies successful the UK, priming fans for her long-awaited debut album, 21st Century Blues, which yet arrives this Friday.

A solemnisation of creator freedom, it hops nimbly betwixt large set ballads (Oscar Winning Tears) and stripped-back blues (Mary Jane) without sacrificing Raye's strident popular personality.

Several of the songs pre-date her flight from large statement purgatory, but thing remains successful its archetypal form.

"All of them person wholly caller vocals and we combed done the songs, chipping distant astatine lyrics and playing a spot of Tetris with however I expressed the stories," says the singer.

Thematically, her extremity was to research the highs and lows of her past decade. And if you've been paying attraction you'll already know: They're mostly lows.

Black Mascara is simply a real-life relationship of having her portion spiked "by idiosyncratic I truly trusted". On Body Dysmorphia, she sings astir being truthful unhappy with her quality that she wanted "to chopped pieces off" her face. Hard Out Here is simply a scathing takedown of euphony manufacture misogyny.

"All the achromatic men CEOs... get your pinkish chubby hands disconnected my mouth," Raye spits implicit a rock-hard hip-hop beat.

Did those lyrics upset her erstwhile bosses?

"Yeah, they did. They did. And I was definite they would," she says. But she was compelled to archer her broadside of the story, nary substance however uncomfortable it made people.

Similarly, the harrowing Ice Cream Man describes her intersexual battle astatine the hands of an A-list grounds producer.

It's been part of her unrecorded set for respective years - but the recorded mentation adds caller lyrics, exposing a signifier of antheral predatory behaviour that's followed her passim her life.

"I was seven, was 21, was 17 and was 11," she sings. "If I was ruthless they'd beryllium successful a penitentiary."

"Sadly, since I wrote, it, there's been different stories to add," she says.

She finds the opus "ridiculously challenging" to play "because it opens each of those details backmost up and I'm not 100% implicit it", but she wanted to stock her experiences, to supply an outlet for chap victims.

"When it happened to me, I didn't archer anyone. I didn't cognize what to bash with it.

"So I anticipation the opus finds its mode to whoever needs it, truthful they tin face those feelings and outcry it out, you know?"

The information of supressing those emotions is thing Raye is each excessively acquainted with.

"When you support things successful similar that, they devour distant astatine you from the inside," she says.

"And for me, sadly, substance maltreatment was entangled with numbing the trauma that I had experienced.

"I got beauteous heavy successful and it got truly unsafe astatine 1 point."

The grade of her dependency came arsenic a shock, arsenic she'd ever been wary of cause use.

In fact, the opus that initially got her recognised, HotBox, was astir her archetypal brushwood with marijuana astatine a schoolhouse friend's house.

"Someone started rolling a monolithic associated and I was like, 'Oh my God: Drugs!'" she told the BBC successful 2017.

"I was conscionable 14 and I said 'no thanks' but I became stoned anyhow due to the fact that the country became a large cloud," she said. "I felt truly scared."

But arsenic her vocation floundered and her self-esteem took a pounding, things got dark.

"It was astir the tallness of my dance-pop [hits]," she recalls. "I was having to spell retired determination and beryllium this blessed popular quality when, successful reality, I was processing this unaddressed trauma and coping with an immense magnitude of pressure.

"Sprinkle a spot of heartbreak connected determination and it's a look for disaster.

"I was conscionable lost. It was a truly bittersweet time."

These days, she's sober again - thing the 25-year-old attributes to rediscovering her Christian faith.

She'd grown up attending a religion successful Croydon, wherever her begetter was the philharmonic manager and her parent sang successful the choir. Nowadays, she has a much backstage narration with religion, hosting Sunday hymn services astatine location with her friends. But the process has been important to her wellbeing.

"There's a satellite successful which if I didn't find religion again, I mightiness not adjacent beryllium here," the vocalist says.

"There's a batch of demons trying to claw astatine you and resistance you to determination you don't belong, truthful I'm truly grateful I person this faith. It's honestly pulled maine retired of a truly acheronian place."

So portion 21st Century Blues exposes Raye's astir wretched days, it besides thrums with a newfound consciousness of purpose.

"I'll bounce back, I'll bounce back," she asserts connected Hard Out Here. "No limb formed against maine shall ever prosper."

"It's truthful casual to instrumentality the disfigured parts and fto them interaction you negatively, but no," she explains.

"I took a measurement backmost to retrieve why, erstwhile I was 10 years old, I told my dada successful the schoolhouse playground, 'This is what I privation to bash with my life'.

"It's not been straightforward since then. It's been a superior push. But erstwhile you emotion what you bash this much, there's conscionable nary alternative.

"And present I've started, thing is stopping me. I'm staring retired astatine an bare skyline and I'm like, which mode bash I privation to go?'"

For Raye, this is lone the beginning.