[Musicians] Raye

[Vinicius™]

• Musician Name: Rachel Agatha Keen
• Birthday / Location: October 24, 1997 (age 22) Born Tooting, London, UK
• Main instrument: Singer, songwriter
• Musician Picture:
• Musician Awards & Nominations:-
• Best Performance: -
• Other Information: RAYE rose to fame after the release, in 2016, of "By Your Side«", a song by producer Jonas Blue in which he participated as vocalist and which was very po[CENSORED]r on the UK charts. Their next collaboration, "You Don't Know" featuring Jax Jones, achieved even greater notoriety and peaked at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2023, her single "Escapism" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.
• Rachel Keen was born in the London Borough of Tooting, United Kingdom, to a mother of Swiss and Ghanaian descent and an English father. She was raised in Pollards Hill and Croydon, south London, in a musical family. His paternal grandfather was an original composer and instrumentalist from Yorkshire, region from which his father moved to London to launch a musical career along with a band, which did not reach success. Her mother is a singer who often performed in the choir of a local church, where she met Raye's father, who occasionally led worship and played the piano. Raye became interested in music at an early age, when she started attending church where she developed her vocal skills. She then fell in love with the gospel music of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Wet Wet Wet, Donnie McClurkin and Kirk Franklin, while also paying close attention to her Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill and Billie Holliday records that she listened to at home. At the age of ten, she performed her first composition that she wrote for a talent contest in primary school in which she participated in several editions. Later, she auditioned for Britain's Got Talent, but without success. At the age of thirteen, she made her first recordings on a portable computer that her maternal uncle Jose gave her, a musician residing in the United States who made her interested in the singer Jill Scott, who cites as one of his main influences. Although, in his second year, with a secondary education certificate (GCSE), he left school to dedicate himself to his musical career, which at that time had begun to take off, after he met a guitar teacher, who was also experienced in composition. . She wrote several songs together with her father and teacher, and over time he introduced her to a friend who was a producer for the Sony / ATV company and also performed several musical works with him. Soon the producer introduced her boss to him, Will Harper, who years later became his manager after jumping to fame. Around this time, she also had several songwriting sessions with Eg White, while also alternating her classes at the Brit School with vocal training on the weekends. At the age of fifteen, she composed «Hotbox» in collaboration with Harper, inspired by the use of marijuana that she experimented with in her school years. The song was published on a website and became po[CENSORED]r, and was especially liked by the lead singer of the band Years & Years, Olly Alexander, who did a lot to support the artist's career, to the point that he aroused the interest of his Polydor record label. and a recording contract was signed with Raye at the beginning of 2015. During 2015 she performed multiple musical shows  and in the middle of that year she performed as the lead singer for Years & Years in a series of concerts across the United Kingdom. The EP disc also featured contributions from producer Fred Gibson  and songwriters Noonie Bao and Charli XCX. The latter co-wrote and directed the video for «I, Ou, Us», which had a positive response from critics, such as Cliff Aimee from The Fader magazine, who praised the sound and lyrics of the song that talks about a love failure, and found similarities with "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift. The journalist also opined that the video captures the “brightness of the song”. That same month, Raye performed at the British festival Bestival  and in September, Nas premiered “War”, a song performed by the rapper and Raye from the current soundtrack of the film The Birth of a Nation.