Raye’s rise from ‘little girl from Croydon with a dream’ who couldn’t sell out church gig to record-breaking Brits champ
SHE made Brits history at the weekend by bagging a record six gongs – but 18 months ago Raye was battling to sell 100 tickets for church gigs.
The singer-songwriter, 26, who once described herself as a “little girl from Croydon with a dream”, grew up on a South London council estate.
She is still paying off a mortgage for a rundown house in nearby Streatham which she shares with two of her three sisters.
Raye triumphed at the Brits in London’s O2 Arena by winning Album of the Year, for debut My 21st Century Blues, and Song of the Year, for Escapism featuring rapper 070 Shake.
She also bagged Best New Artist, Songwriter of the Year, Best R&B Act and Artist of the Year.
It was the biggest haul by a single act that the event has ever seen, as she smashed the previous best of four awards, recorded by Harry Styles in 2023, Adele in 2016 and Blur in 1995.
Movingly, Raye called her grandma Agatha Dawson to the stage and broke down in tears, saying: “I want to thank my grandma for her prayers.
“My grandma is still awake until 3am praying for me and my beautiful sisters.
“I love you so much.”
But Raye is not your typical pop star.
She is candid about her strong Christian faith and Bible study, and how these helped her deal with drug addiction and anxiety issues.
She has said: “There’s a world in which if I didn’t find faith again, I might not even be here.
“There’s a lot of demons trying to claw at you and drag you to somewhere you don’t belong, so I’m really grateful I have this faith.
“It’s honestly pulled me out of a really dark place.”
Worship songs
Her songs about her past struggles with drugs, an eating disorder and sexual assault by an A-list record producer have won over an army of fans and she is tipped to follow Dame Shirley Bassey, Adele, Tina Turner and Billie Eilish to sing a Bond movie theme when the next film is released.
But her now all-conquering success comes three years after a fallout with record label Polydor, which signed her in 2014 then refused to let her make her own album despite scoring nine Top 40 successes with a series of dance collabs.
She had helped with writing and production work for Beyonce, Little Mix, Rihanna, Ellie Goulding, David Guetta and John Legend.
But her Brit wins were all the sweeter because her granddad once had his own run-in with a record label.
Raye previously told how he used to write songs and send them to record firms, adding: “He had a big song stolen from him.
“I can’t say who by, I don’t have the money to deal with the lawsuit.
“But I come from a history of love for music, and it’s beautiful for him to see [my Brits wins] because he was a small Yorkshire lad, he couldn’t really do anything about it.”
Raye’s rise has been anything but easy and would have been almost impossible without her parents, who quit their careers to manage her.
She admitted: “Eighteen months ago my career had gone to s***.
“I remember seeing my agent at a gig.
“I went up to him, with tears in my eyes, and begged him not to give up.
“I told him I had more fight in me.
“A week later he set up this tiny tour.
“It was 100 tickets per venue.
“Me sat at the piano for two hours talking the audience through my story so far.
“Had someone said I’d be at the O2 in less than two years, I would have thought they were mad.”
That moment with her gran on the Brits stage gave a glimpse of how close Raye is to her Christian family.
They encouraged her musical talent in pentecostal church, where her dad was a musical director and her mum a chorister.
Her mum, also an NHS mental health worker, and dad, an insurance firm manager, quit their jobs to help Raye after she split from Polydor in 2021.
The dreams they lured me with were hot air
She said: “Their previous jobs make them ideal.
“My mum’s seen it all in 30 years in mental health.
“My dad would go into companies, learn about them and set them goals.”
Raye, real name Rachel Agatha Keen, was born in Tooting to a Ghanaian-Swiss mum and Yorkshire dad and has three younger sisters, two of whom are also chasing fame.
Singer-songwriter Abby, who collaborated with Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock on her latest solo album, and songwriter Lauren, both live with Raye.
There is also a 12-year-old sister, Katelyn, who featured on the artwork for Raye’s debut album.
As a kid, Raye’s family later moved six miles to Croydon, where she went to Woodcote High School.
She said: “I’d sneak out at, like, three in the morning to meet friends and smoke a cigarette.
“I was dreaming while walking on those grey pavements”
She credits her family’s Christian faith for her love of music and tells how her dad showed her how to play worship songs on his piano.
She said: “We used to watch The X Factor every week but I was brought up in church.
“My dad used to lead worship and my mum would sing in the choir, so there was always music going on.
“My dad used to sit me at the piano as this little kid.
“I’d sit on his lap and push his hand out of the way, like, ‘I can do it!’”
After school each day Raye would lie on her living room floor and play The Diary Of Alicia Keys, the singer’s 2003 album, “like a religion”.
Aged ten, she performed in front of her school, singing a song she had written herself.
Recognising her talent, dad Paul — who praises his girls on Instagram — bought Raye a mic and created a makeshift recording studio by placing a duvet over the door to act as a sound buffer.
By age 14, Raye had got into the Brit School in Croydon, which boasts alumni such as Adele, Leona Lewis and Jessie J — but she quit the talent school after two years as “nobody there liked pop music”.
She said: “It’s all cool, underground, indie artists.
“I did a song called Hotbox and was scared to play it to people because I was like, ‘Oh my friends might think this is most embarrassing’.”
But Raye had the last laugh when Olly Alexander from the band Years & Years heard Hotbox and played it to his label Polydor, who later offered her a four-album deal.
She said: “I had my first album pretty much ready to go before I’d even joined the label.
“By the time I was 17 they had spent three years wooing me . . . over fancy dinners.”
But Raye soon realised “the dreams they lured me with were hot air”.
She spent years teetering on the edge of success, with guest appearances in 2016 on hits such as By Your Side by Jonas Blue and You Don’t Know Me by Jax Jones in 2016.
Codeine and MDMA
She also worked writing hits for major names including Beyonce and John Legend, but Polydor wanted more dance songs, insisting she could only take creative control once she was better known.
In 2021 Raye took to Twitter to vent her frustration.
She wrote: “Imagine the pain.
“I have been signed to a major label since 2014 . . . and I have had albums on albums of music sat in folders collecting dust, songs I am now giving away to A-list artists because I am still waiting for confirmation I am good enough to release an album.”
She parted company with Polydor a few months later.
Now an independent artist, Raye has never shied away from more uncomfortable subjects in her songs, writing about her anxiety, eating disorders, spiralling drug abuse and sexual assault.
I was constantly in some form of seduction just to get along with it
Last November in an interview with Louis Theroux, she revealed how she turned to drugs to cope, admitting to having taken codeine and MDMA after reaching “my limit”.
She said: “I wasn’t able to get along with my career because I was constantly in some form of seduction just to get along with it.
“Whether it be weed or other things, which I write about on my album.”
On her track Ice Cream Man, which she performed at the Brits, she recalls an assault by an unnamed producer in a music studio.
In another about Body Dysmorphia, she sings: “I’m so hungry I can’t sleep, but I know if I’ll eat then I’ll be in the bathroom on my knees.”
She says her debut album was about “things I’ve been keeping buried”, adding: “It’s not necessarily considered attractive as a woman to talk about substance abuse, rape, body dysmorphia, but these uncomfortable subjects are battles people are navigating through.
“I want to be a woman discussing unformatable topics we don’t talk about, these are all things I battle with in the darkness and in silence.”
Raye’s unique voice and distinctive look have drawn comparisons with the late Amy Winehouse, who also attended the Brit School and struggled with substance abuse.
Raye said: “I get insecure with that comparison. She’s, like, top tier.”
Undying support
As Raye now goes stratospheric she can always rely on her family to get her through any rough patches.
She often shares clips of her gran on Twitter and they share the same laugh.
On stage with her at the Brit, she said: “I’m ugly crying on national television.
“I love music.
“All I wanted to be was an artist and now I’m an artist with an album of the year.
“Thank you so much, come on Grandma, let’s go.”
Raye has also had the undying support of dad Paul.
A year after she left Polydor he took to Instagram to write: “A year ago yesterday, Raye disturbed my peaceful evening with a phone call: ‘Dad I think I may have done something . . . sorry!’ ‘Ok. Just go look at Twitter and call me back.’
“I thought the bottom had fallen in, but it opened the door for what is about to launch today. Raye 2:0!”
And he added: “God gets all the glory.
“What he has done for us blows my mind.”
With six Brits on the mantelpiece, it seems Raye was right to follow her own path.
