Born Rachel Agatha Keen, Raye has been making waves in the music industry since 2014 and is tired of the disrespect around her name. Originally signed to Polydor Records, the artist has always only ever wanted to release an album of her own. Instead, the record label seemed happiest having her write hit tracks for other musicians like Beyonce (“Bigger”) and Charli XCX (“After The Afterparty”).
Heads came to a blow when Raye’s massive hit collaboration with David Guetta, “Bed,” wasn’t enough for Polydor to greenlight her debut. Instead, it was implied that the success of her follow-up, “Call on Me,” would determine her fate.
The beef led Raye to call out Polydor on Twitter, writing, “I’ve done everything they asked me, I switched genres, I worked 7 days a week. Ask anyone in the music game, they know. I’m done being a polite pop star. I want to make my album now, please that is all I want.”
As of today, Raye is done doing business with her former record label, leaving them while making sure not to totally burn the bridge that helped launch her career:
“Polydor are an incredible infrastructure power house team. Unfortunately we have had different goals artistically and I am very grateful to them for giving me a graceful smooth exit to start my next chapter as an artist.”
Now an independent artist, Raye is finally able to put her efforts into her long-anticipated debut. It’s been an eight-year-long trip – one that has helped the artists grow and reflect – and one that has also allowed her to get angry for the next phase of her career.
Raye is happy to finally be working for herself, because as she told NME, “When you sign with a record label, technically they work for you: you’re signing to a company for them to work for your career and take you to that next level. But as a woman, it just doesn’t feel like that. It feels like you’re working for them. And you know, some of the things I had to put my body through to even be able to that… it’s really quite sad.”