☎️ BRIT Awards Winner RAYE — The Weekend (acoustic) — live in Oakland — 2023

Raye plays an acoustic version of the Stormzy / Raye song "The Weekend" live in concert at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California on November 3, 2023. Raye wrote The Weekend with British rapper and singer Michael Omari a/k/a Stormzy. They released it as a single in July 2023 and it reached Number 23 on the UK Singles Chart. Raye (@RAYEofficial) is a 26-year-old British singer-songwriter from London who has written songs for Rihanna, Beyoncé, John Legend, David Guetta, Ellie Goulding, and Jax Jones. She released her debut album in 2023 and has received an Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song and the Brits Billion Award for over 1 billion digital streams in the UK. This was one of the final nights of the North American leg of her My 21st Century Blues World Tour.

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Raye official bio:

“The goals I had when I was 17 are the goals I have now,” states singer, songwriter, producer, engineer, hitmaker, international superstar and music industry disruptor Raye, who even as a young artist has already had a stratospheric rise to the top and the first #1 hit of 2023. “I want to release real, true, unfiltered, untainted art and stand by that and back that. To speak fearlessly and to challenge norms and be bold.”

The 25-year-old south Londoner born Rachel Keen has done just that in 2023. After parting ways with her former label and starting anew, Raye came back with a vengeance and a lot to say on her debut album, My 21st Century Blues, hit the #2 spot on the UK charts and out-performed most of the other 2023 UK releases, streaming almost 1 Billion times in less than six months.

From the start, Raye relished being a maverick. Brought up in a musical household – her dad and grandad were both songwriters and played in bands – Raye's tastes combined both the Ella Fitzgerald songs her mum used to play and the Rihanna and Drake bangers she got into as she got older. Growing up in a mixed race family (her mum is Ghanaian-Swiss and her dad English), it took her a while to figure out her identity, both as a person and later as an artist. She caught the songwriting bug from an early age, with piano lessons helping her formulate songs as she moved into double digits. Even before that, aged 8, she was getting into production, sampling a jazz-tinged jingle she’d heard on TV and re-writing it as a Christmas song. It was around this same time that Raye decided she wanted to go to the Brit School, the creative hothouse that had helped shape the likes of Adele and Amy Winehouse. Once ensconced in such a creative environment, her songwriting talents flourished, with her lessons punctuated with weekend recording sessions with the likes of award-winning songwriter Eg White (Adele, Florence & the Machine).

Itching to get started properly, she left the Brit School in 2014 aged just 16. That same year she released the independently-funded, blissed out Welcome To Winter EP on Soundcloud, following it two years later with the bolder pop of the acclaimed, Stormzy-assisted Second EP, released by Polydor. In May 2018 her penchant for sonic experimentation continued with the hip-hop-leaning collaborative mixtape Side Tape, featuring the huge top 20 single Decline, before she released her emotionally unguarded mini-album, Euphoric Sad Songs, in 2020. Six of its nine tracks went on to stream over 25m times on Spotify alone and her international profile sky-rocketed having co-written Bigger for Beyoncé for her 2019 album, The Lion King: The Gift, along with additional writing for John Legend, Ellie Goulding, Charli XCX, Little Mix, David Guetta and more along the way.

Faced with the freedom to do whatever she wanted post-label split, Raye started to work through the folders of music left languishing on her laptop. Rather than let it go to waste, she started to re-work it, some of which she had started when she was 19 with Mike Sabath, who became executive producer of the final M21CB album. Raye's debut album as an independent artist was the exact cathartic release she needed after years of having her voice and experiences suppressed. “I have a song on the album dedicated to addiction,” she says. “I have a song dedicated to body dysmorphia. A song dedicated to sexual abuse and rape. It’s dark. Songs I’ve had for years that I’ve needed to express and share. Before, I was told it was too uncomfortable and that audiences don’t want to hear it.” These songs are real and these songs are Raye.

Raye bet on herself and has been a magnet for success; earning critical adoration from press all over the world, touring with Lewis Capaldi, Kali Uchis and SZA on sold out shows across North America, Europe and the UK and earning her first Top 10 slots at Pop and Rhythm radio in North America. Then she continues her mammoth touring year as she announces the second part of her ‘M21CB Tour’, with 25 headline shows in North America tour in addition to 15 shows tour of UK and Europe and her first shows in Australia coming at the start of 2024.

Видео ☎️ BRIT Awards Winner RAYE — The Weekend (acoustic) — live in Oakland — 2023 канала Tim Bracken