My 21st Century Blues

“This is about me telling the stories I want to tell, in the order I want to tell them, through the sonic landscape I want to tell them,” RAYE tells Apple Music of her debut album, My 21st Century Blues. The South London singer-songwriter, born Rachel Keen, had to wait longer than most to do that. In June 2021, she claimed on social media that she hadn’t been “allowed” to release a debut LP, despite having signed a four-album deal seven years earlier, and that she was “sick of being slept on.” (She left her label shortly after and released this LP as an independent artist.) “There really did have to be quite a lot of soul searching and therapy and forgiveness and reflection,” says RAYE of the aftermath. “I wanted to go back to the songs that I was passionate about.” Those were tracks that RAYE had written years earlier, and which, revisited and reworked, make up half of My 21st Century Blues. Most of the others were written fresh, after she escaped to a cabin in Utah with producer and friend Mike Sabath, armed with a laundry list of topics to dig into (reflected in some of the album’s meatier song titles, such as “Body Dysmorphia.” and “Environmental Anxiety.”). My 21st Century Blues can sometimes be a difficult listen: RAYE unflinchingly processes traumatic experiences including sexual violence, substance abuse, disordered eating and the suffocation she has felt as a woman in music, with embraces of everything from trip-hop to hypnotic dance, dancehall, cinematic pop, gospel, blues and more. Getting to this point, she says, feels like “the most beautiful validation,” as well as something close to healing. “Everything for me on this is so medicinal,” she says. “I’m so excited for the artist now I get to become. This has set the tone for me, knowing how much potential there is in what I can say and what stories I can tell.” Read on as RAYE talks us through every track on her long-awaited debut. “Introduction.” “Before synths and electronic stuff, it was just a show