RAYE’s Independent Rise: From Label Limbo to Global Stardom

The other day, RAYE was rewatching one of her old interviews. On screen, a much younger version of herself — dyed blonde hair in untamed coils, ambition sparkling in her eyes — spoke about her then-out-of-reach career dreams.

“My voice was a little bit squeakier,” the 28-year-old British pop powerhouse says now on a sunny March afternoon in Los Angeles, laughing fondly at her teenage tenacity. She mimics how she used to sound: “I’m like, ‘I just need a shot,’ ” she recalls. “I was so young and hungry.”

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She’d eventually get that shot — but not for many excruciating years, and not in the way she’d once expected. It didn’t come in 2014, when she first signed with Polydor Records and felt, at the time, that she’d made it. Nor did it come in the years she spent under that contract, when other, more powerful people placed her lifelong goal of making an album on the eternal back burner. While her voice gravitated toward soulful pop, her label granted her only a few sparse EDM single releases, some of her own and some as a featured voice on other artists’ tracks — “In the U.K., dance music sold really well,” she explains — but primarily it worked her as a songwriter, her talents benefiting the careers of artists such as Beyoncé, Charli xcx and Ellie Goulding while her own remained in limbo.

By the time she posted an attention-grabbing series of tweets pleading for a change in 2021, she felt completely powerless. “I’m done being a polite pop star,” she wrote at the time. “I want to make my album now, please that is all I want.”

Today, things look a little different. For one, the blonde frizz is gone, in its place a chic brunette bob that — combined with RAYE’s angular face and bright red lips — makes her look a bit like a Jazz Age painting come to life. Anything but squeaky now, her speaking voice is just as divine as her otherworldly vocals, and she has colorful tattoos of the British, Swiss and Ghanaian flags stamped onto her forearm to remind her of her heritage. She’s hoping to get more ink soon, probably of a trumpet, to represent her maximalist, theatrical second album, This Music May Contain Hope , which is already one of the most talked-about pop releases of the year.

Because, yes: She did eventually get to make that album she’d always ­wanted — her critically acclaimed 2023 debut, My 21st Century Blues — and now this second one, too.

But before that, it was “seven years of a very tumultuous and complicated relationship with life and my purpose and what I was creating,” she says. “The person I am now is so different. I really like who I am now.”

She pauses. “I didn’t like who I was then.”

It’s clear that RAYE doesn’t enjoy looking back on that period, which is perhaps best summarized as “the before.” Ask her about making music, performing or even her top Nintendo games, and she lights up, making sweeping gestures with her arms and moving so much in her chair that it rocks as she talks. (It’s stupefying to hear her say modern phrases like “… Super Mario Galaxy 2 , Donkey Kong — my favorite Switch game of all time is Super Mario Odyssey …” in a timbre that would make more sense drifting out of the most weathered vinyl in your grandmother’s collection.)

When discussing “the before,” though, she’s quieter. Her expression drops in a way that’s almost undetectable but leaves you wondering which unspoken memories are flashing through her mind. “I was not in a great place,” she says, keeping her replies general. “I was not around great people or doing great things.”

RAYE has been open in her music about having dealt with mental health, body image and drug dependency issues. She’s also alluded to feeling distant from her family during those years with Polydor, even though parents Paul and Sarah Keen now oversee her team, and she collaborates with her younger sisters, singer-­songwriters Amma and Absolutely, who are currently opening on her This Tour May Contain New Music outing.

She’s been even less explicit about how her career and personal struggles have related to and fed one another. But on the Saturday of our conversation in the lounge of CenterStaging studios in Burbank, the temporary loading and rehearsal space for her band ahead of the spring North American leg of her trek, she acknowledges, “I think [it was] probably just an all-around combination. If you’re an artist creating stuff you resent or aren’t proud of … that whole time just wasn’t healthy, and some of it I don’t remember.”

“Those are the things that I hate to hear about RAYE’s past,” says Julius “J” Erving, whose company Human Re Sources distributed both of her albums, which she self-released. “I’m not speaking on any individual or company, but … you don’t want to see someone that you care about stressed, having anxiety or not doing well mentally.”

“I’d built some habits that were really destructive,” RAYE adds, noting that “drinking’s not ever been my vice” and she’s now sober from other substances. “Clearly, I was just unhappy. This industry isn’t for the faint of heart.”

She would know. Even as a songwriter for other artists, she faced repeated letdowns. An alum of the prestigious BRIT School performing arts academy who taught herself to use GarageBand as a preteen, RAYE was demoralized to learn upon entering the workforce how frequently people in power deployed “manipulation tactics” to lessen her pay splits or undercut her contributions to the music she helped write. (“Ask any songwriter,” she says grimly. “They know the deal.”) She’s since campaigned tirelessly for change, helping musician advocacy group The Ivors Academy secure a landmark deal between the government and major labels last year guaranteeing per diems and covered expenses for songwriters in the United Kingdom. But inequitable standards for royalty points and pushback on proper credits remain ongoing issues, which RAYE has now seen Amma and Absolutely face as they follow in her footsteps.

“People think just because you’re a ‘little girl’ that you aren’t entitled [to recognition],” she says, getting heated. “That because you added a couple synths and did the chords and the vocal production and this and that, well, you’re not a producer. It happened [to my sisters] over and over again” — she puffs up her chest, as if bracing for a fistfight — “and I was like, ‘Hold me back!’ ”

Through those hard years, the guidance of other women who could relate gave her strength. She still remembers feeling a new wind in her sails after Halsey praised her music offstage during the Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour, which RAYE opened in 2018. And after feeling “so insecure” about the pressure to be in constant competition with other women in music, early collaborator Charli xcx “completely broke that narrative” by inviting her over — long before “ brat summer” entered the pop cultural lexicon — and giving her tips to feel more confident onstage. “She was like, ‘OK, here’s your hairbrush,’ ” RAYE recalls, holding up an invisible pretend microphone. “‘Right, look in the mirror.’ ”

“Upon meeting [RAYE], I came to discover she was kind, funny, intelligent and determined,” Halsey tells Billboard . “It didn’t take long to find out she was also being obstructed. We talked a bit about our career journeys, and it was evident immediately that there was a destiny brewing inside her that was bursting to get free. She spoke about the hindrance at her label with an understandable amount of frustration and apathy, but without a single glimmer of surrender.”

“I’m just really grateful to all those girls,” RAYE says, adding in SZA and Taylor Swift, who also offered support when she served as their openers in 2023 and 2024, respectively. “That little time they took to pour into me really affirmed me and made me feel encouraged. Those things can make all the difference.”

Ultimately, after yet another instance where she was told one of her singles had to do well before she could start on an album — in this case, “Call on Me”; you can still find her old tweets asking fans to help her cause by streaming it — RAYE decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Hoping to force a rupture, she unleashed those posts exposing the pain of having her dreams kicked down the line for years, and 20 days later, on July 19, 2021, she returned to the internet with an announcement. “Today,” she wrote , “I am speaking to you as an independent artist.”

Polydor had agreed to release RAYE from her contract, allowing label and disgruntled signee to part ways relatively amicably — a rarity in the industry, and one for which she remains grateful, despite everything.

Finally, she was free to write, record and release whatever music she wanted, whenever she wanted. How did she feel about it?

“Absolutely terrified.”

When she first enters the studio where we meet in L.A., RAYE is trailed by an assistant holding a pair of heeled black boots that she repeatedly refuses to put on.

“Your stylist is going to kill me,” the assistant tells her, but she isn’t interested in wearing anything aside from her fuzzy slippers for our interview. Sometimes, she slips those off, too, living up to her reputation of going without shoes or socks, including onstage. (She is listed on Wikipedia’s page of notable “barefooters.”)

It’s a small, symbolic way in which RAYE is clearly calling her own shots. There are plenty of other signs, both subtle and direct; even before her arrival, her touring band was hard at work rehearsing live arrangements of the wildly ambitious songs she never could’ve dreamed of releasing a few years ago — and which she will perform not only on her headlining tour but also as an opener for Bruno Mars’ The Romantic stadium run, one of pop’s most coveted support slots this year. At various points, choreographer Maureen Moores reminds the string players to twirl their bows in the air like lassos every time RAYE sings ­“Holla!” during lead single “Where Is My Husband!,” which reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April, her highest peak on the chart to date. Just a few days ago, she performed the song as Swift, among other major stars, let loose in the audience at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. And as we’re ­wrapping up for the day, she smiles mischievously while recounting how good it felt to “scream” her smash hit at people from “the old label” who had been in attendance.

Welcome to “the after.” It’s RAYE’s show now.

Over the past several years, more and more artists have found success independently — but few have achieved the kind of growth from start to finish that RAYE has without a label. Since leaving Polydor, she’s racked up billions of streams, notched two U.K. No. 1 singles and won seven BRIT Awards (six of which were in 2024, a record for the most in one year). Erving thinks she’s on track to become the world’s first independent global superstar.

How did she get here? Even she isn’t sure, to be honest. “I don’t even know what we were doing,” she says, the past half-decade a blur. “It was a lot of hustling.”

That included “no sleep, stupid travel hours” and “belting into any microphone” she was given, plus lots of self-funding and trading favors — like when she played a free gig for a friend in exchange for use of his club as a music video set. “I don’t know how many music videos we shot in my house,” she reminisces. “Bags on the windows, rent lighting … I remember getting [“Escapism.” collaborator] 070 Shake in my living room and shooting her part [with] this weird circle light.”

The only thing RAYE was absolutely certain of when it came to launching her indie journey was the very first step she was going to take: make an album. Overwhelmed by relief, exhaustion, excitement and fear, one question guided her as she embarked on th

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/raye-billboard-cover-story-2026-interview-1236239969/)._