SOMETIMES IT’S GOOD to start at the end. On the final song of Raye’s debut album My 21st Century Blues. finally due out on 3rd February, after holdups that delayed her from releasing a full-length record for the best part of a decade she speaks directly to the listener over a gently swirling piano riff. I’ve waited seven years for this moment,” she says. And My 21st Century Blues. is now ours, forever.”
It’s a poignant conclusion to an extremely hard-won triumph. At only 25, Raye, born Rachel Agatha Keen in Tooting, south London, is already a music industry veteran, and in her time she has seen the underbelly of the machine first-hand. Aged 17, she signed a four-album deal with Polydor, but in early 2022, following years of being creatively stifled, she publicly broke from the label indeed, by the end of their arrangement, Raye had still not been allowed to release an album).
Freedom as an independent artist under the distribution company Human Re Sources followed. By late December, when Raye and I speak, her decision to break ties is completely vindicated: her song Escapism’, featuring 070 Shake, which was released in October and became an unexpectedly slow-burning TikTok hit, has just reached number two in the UK charts coming in only behind Mariah’s perennial end-of-year smash All I Want for Christmas Is You’), and number one in Ireland. In January, it topped the UK chart.
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Back to the Grind - The Clipse broke up when a spiritual path called to one of the brothers from Virginia. Now, one of the greatest duos in rap returns
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Chappell Roan The Pain & Pleasure of a Pop Supernova - Do you want to bedazzle my grinder?
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The Mix - String Theory - On new album Odyssey, Nubya Garcia conducts sweeping strings over her innovative saxophone playing to mark herself out as a unique star of the UK jazz world
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Sounding the Alert - The UK music industry is calling for the new Labour government to make essential changes to rescue British music - from halting the closure of venues to providing essential opportunities for new talent
To quote one Bob Dylan: "the times they are a-changin." After 14 years of Tory rule, 4 July saw a changing of the guard in British politics as Sir Keir Starmer stood on the steps of Downing Street to mark the start of a new Labour government and - according to the man himself - a decade of national renewal.Not that the result was ever in doubt, however. A cursory look at polls over the preceding year showed that a Labour landslide was very much on the cards, and it seemed like those aforementioned Dylan lyrics were about to ring true.
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Nine years after his decade-defining debut album In Colour, Jamie xx returns with In Waves, a darker and broodier follow-up that saw him fall back in love with making music
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On their career-best fourth album, Fontaines D.C. have shed their skin of old to deliver something more fantastical. Grian Chatten tells us the story behind their evolution
