Newcomer Raye has been tearing up the urban music scene as one of its most promisingly fresh faces. If you follow the end-of-year predictions in a big way, you’ll know that she chalked up a third place result on the BBC Sound of 2017 poll. And the other big piece of news is that Years & Years Olly Alexander is part way responsible for helping Raye to secure a record deal.
There are indeed some cross-over moments within Raye’s style of music and this is why she more than probably won favour as a collaborator with pop queen Charli XCX also. I have been observing with growing curiosity Raye’s ascension on the music scene, but haven’t wholly embraced the urban pop vibe that it transmits. Nonetheless, release by release my interest is growing in Raye and “Shhh” is where it really began to alight my attention.
Not being specifically branded as electronic or pop, Raye wasn’t among the top acts on our check-list for The Great Escape. However, some bigger force out there must have known that I’ve been warming to Raye, because strangely enough Raj and I met up at Coalition to take in a set by another artist and we must have had a planning malfunction because it was actually Raye who was giving it large down there at Coalition instead. We were tightly packed into the crowd, so we were not going nowhere. To be honest, there was a good energy in the room anyway and you got caught up in that regardless. I could certainly appreciate Raye’s set as it did bring to light a bounding amount of exuding confidence, which in turn had me in the zone and in fine voice on Raye’s biggest hit “I, U, Us”.
The track that really played to our tastes was “You Don’t Know Me”, which is currently Raye’s most recent collaborative effort with Jax Jones. A little bit pop. A little bit urban. A little bit EDM in the mix, proved to be our favourite
flavour giving us a better overview of what Raye’s capabilities can extend to, growing as an artist.