The winner of the 2017 Brits Critics’ Choice award and the winner of the BBC Sound of 2017 have never met before today. In some senses, Rory Graham, 32, better known as Rag’n’Bone Man, and Rita Ekwere, 23, better known as RAY BLK, make for an intriguing study in contrasts. He hails from the small town of Uckfield in East Sussex; she comes from Nigeria, by way of Catford in south-east London.
He spent the best part of a decade as a fixture on Brighton’s small but vibrant hip-hop scene – supporting visiting US rappers as part of the collective Rum Committee, performing his own blues-inspired material at pubs and open-mic nights – and occasionally self-releasing records. Then, a critical buzz began to build, he signed to Sony and his single Human broke the charts. Were the charts still based on sales rather than streaming, it would have been 2016’s Christmas No 1.
She inadvertently kick-started her career while at university by posting songs to SoundCloud for friends and family to hear and watched in surprise as “hipsters and tastemakers started sharing them”. Her 2016 mixtape, Durt, featured collaborations with Stormzy and Wretch 32, led to Radio 1 airplay and an appearance on Jools Holland. She is the first unsigned artist to win the BBC Sound of … award. And while she is about to play the third headline gig of her career, he has the friendly but weary air of a man who has spent recent weeks touring and doing promotion in Europe: Human was a huge hit on the continent before it took off in the UK. “Nine interviews in a day, one after the other, same questions,” he sighs. “You can see how artists can become really self-centred, in a way, because you end up talking about yourself so much.”
But at the start of 2017, they both find themselves in a roughly similar position, their blossoming careers now freighted with the excitement and expectation that comes with receiving the two newcomer awards inevitably seen as an indicator of vast future success. (When mentioning the BBC Sound of … poll and the Brits’ Critics’ Choice, it’s apparently obligatory under law to mention that Adele and Sam Smith are among the previous winners.) And they begin by talking about something they have in common: their shared roots in rap.
RAY BLK: Rapping was my entry into music, really. I loved US hip-hop, but as a teenager in London, all I would hear is grime, so I grew up listening to Dizzee Rascal and Wiley when I was really young, and that made me want to rap. It was a playground thing – all the boys huddled together and went bar for bar, and I just wanted to get involved … that’s how I started, just writing raps. I was the only girl in the circle, trying to get listened to. And then, when I was about 13, I joined a crew of all-male rappers and I wanted to rap as well, and they wanted me to sing, because I could. So I became the singer.
Rag’n’Bone Man: When I was 15, I wanted to be a jungle MC. Everybody I knew wanted to be Stevie Hyper D or Skibadee or whatever. I kind of knew about American hip-hop, but then I heard Roots Manuva and I was like, “Oh, shit.” That opened my eyes up to everything. I didn’t even know there were people in the UK doing it. So I rapped before I sang, too. It definitely had more impact on me than any [other] kind of music, although I also kind of embraced the music my parents liked, all their great jazz and soul music. We formed Rum Committee and I started to write over beats. But eventually I felt bound by just beats and hip-hop, do you know what I mean? There’s a difference between producers and beat makers. Sometimes you’ll say to a beat maker, “Oh, what you’ve done there is sick, but can you put it in a different key and do the bridge like this?” And they’re like: “No way. It’s just a sample, and that’s as far as it goes.” So I wanted to start writing songs from the ground up, you know, sit at a piano and work a song out and decide what it’s going to be later.
RAY BLK: Hip-hop has influenced my songwriting. When I write songs, I feel like I write them as a rapper would. I fell in love with hip-hop because of the stories and the way they were told, so that has kind of been my approach to writing. I’ve always been very conscious about the lyrics and telling the story – and connecting with someone in that way.
RAY BLK, Your first mixtape was a kind of song suite, based on Miss Haversham from Great Expectations.
Rag’n’Bone Man: That idea is cool as fuck!
RAY BLK: I was just really inspired by the art of storytelling, I was at uni, studying Dickens, and that character really stuck out to me. I felt it was relatable to so many girls I knew, who were sour about past experiences and just absolutely hated men’s guts. And I felt there was no better way to talk about that than to sing about it. I made it just for my girlfriends so they could listen to it. I expected about 20 listens on SoundCloud or something, but the internet is incredible, and it just kind of got shared. That’s when I got a manager, and put a video out for a song called Fifty Fifty. I was just doing little gigs here and there in east London – and it just exploded.
Rag’n’Bone Man: At first, I didn’t focus that much on the internet. I was more: I’m going to write songs, and I’d have sung that song out in a club, pub or a jam session or whatever 10 times before I recorded it. We live in an internet age, and if you don’t embrace it, you get left behind a bit. But live is still really important, and I don’t think people hone their craft live enough.
I think there’s an attitude these days that you can go straight from a studio to the stage, and it isn’t really like that. But playing live was the most important thing for me at the start because whenever I recorded something, it didn’t sound right, I didn’t like how my voice sounded. It was just raw. Nobody told me how to sing, so I just thought I’d try and sing like Howlin’ Wolf. It was like a bark; there was melody to it – but I would go off a bit and I wouldn’t stick AutoTune on it or anything to make it in key. Even now, I couldn’t tell you about harmonies. I couldn’t tell about what notes I’m singing because nobody taught me to sing. I just sort of listened to myself and thought, “OK, you can sing that better – but how?” I just taught myself, through playing gigs and listening to myself.
RAY BLK: I didn’t have any professional singing lessons, either. I got a lot of musical training singing in a church choir.
Rag’n’Bone Man: I’m really jealous of that kind of thing. When I lived in London, I lived next to the church. On some days I used to open the door and listen to the singing. I don’t know this for a fact, because I didn’t grow up in a church environment, but it seemed to be strict in the choir. I’d hear them singing and it was like, if one person was out, they’d get bollocked. Is that the case?
RAY BLK: In rehearsals, yeah, definitely. You’ve got to be on point and make sure you iron out any creases in it. It’s teamwork, really. It was there that I learned about harmonies and how important it is to stay in key. And in a church choir, it’s not just about the singing. It’s about the people listening to you singing. Because the choir’s job in a church is to get people in the vibe and get them excited and ready for whatever’s going to be preached.
So it was there that I learned how to control a crowd and how to evoke emotion in singing. It was the best thing I could have had to teach me. And then I’d go back home and listen to my mum’s Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston CDs, and that taught me how to sing, too, because I’d just rehearse every song, and try to get the note right all the time. I’d enter talent shows, just really small local talent shows. The thing is, I always took them really seriously. It was just people from the area, but in my head it was like a national X Factor-level kind of thing, so I would rehearse and make sure everything was perfect. I used to love doing little things like that.
Rag’n’Bone Man: I think the main ambition I’ve got, the proper ambition, is still the live thing. Obviously, the accolades are nice, and getting a Brit award is a beautiful thing, and hearing, “Oh, you’re No 2 in the chart,” or whatever is nice because that’s something my mum appreciates. But I like playing to people, and that keeps growing. So as long as that happens, the rest of it can kind of take a side.
RAY BLK: I feel the same, to be honest. I feel like you can’t really measure success these days. It’s like, YouTube views matter, but then some people have a hundred million views and not many record sales … so how do you measure whether that’s successful or not? But the only thing I’ve ever wanted is to have music be my career for as long as I’d like it to be. So I feel if I can stay in music and have a career maintained over a long period, that’s a success. A sustainable career: that’s my measure of success.
Rag’n’Bone Man: It’s not easy to have longevity these days. The music industry’s the most fickle it has ever been.
RAY BLK: Yeah. Hot today and not tomorrow.
Rag’n’Bone Man: It’s brutal. I just heard that Laura Mvula got dropped by her label. She put it on Twitter, and I was like: I can’t believe it. I think she’s one of the most innovative songwriters and artists of the moment. She’s by far my favourite songwriter in the UK at the moment. I mean, I’m on a Sony label, but I’m not going to stick up for Sony doing that because I think it’s ridiculous. It’s just weird how success is measured. I heard Jack Garrett [last year’s BBC Sound of … and Brits Critics’ Choice Award] talking about that, and I felt really … not sorry for him … but I felt like it was a horrible thing that he must have heard certain people talking about his album and saying that it was, like, a failure because it didn’t sell a certain amount of records. You sold 60,000 copies of your album. How can that be a failure?
Do you think there’s an unnecessary pressure placed on artists who win those things because some of the previous winners have gone on to be hugely commercially successful? Do you feel it yourself?
Rag’n’Bone Man: I guess there must be an expectation there, but I think it’s good to try and ignore that side of it. I don’t really like spending too much time thinking about what other people expect of me because then it starts to become a big fuckery in your head – “Oh, what do I do?” – and that’s not really how I see music anyway. You should just make the music, and other people decide whether they like it or not. You shouldn’t be like, “What do people expect of me, should I do this because it’s what people expect?” I don’t know.
RAY BLK: I think it’s a bit more empowering to say that these lists of incredibly successful artists have come before us to win the Brits or Sound of … and it just means that we have the potential to achieve that level of success as well. At the time when Adele or Sam Smith won these things, they weren’t globally successful artists either. They were just starting out. But I can’t believe it. I’m really a very regular girl from quiet, trampy Catford who just started writing songs in my bedroom to pass the time because I had nothing better to do.
But you must have realised your career was taking off long before that happened.
RAY BLK: When I first started getting plays on Radio 1 or 1Xtra and my video was getting views, what really made me feel like something was happening was people in my area recognising what was going on: “Hiya, I’ve heard your tune!” That meant a lot to me, being certified where I’m from. It was just like people where I’m from, I’m representing them, and they’re happy about that.
Rag’n’Bone Man: I liked that, too. I remember going and getting my hair cut in Brighton and he was like, “No no no, Rags, you don’t pay in here, it’s fine, I’ll cut your hair for free.” I mean it was a whack haircut, he made me look stupid, but I got it for free and that was pretty cool.
RAY BLK: Made it!
Rag’n’Bone Man: I don’t get free haircuts now. Not from the guy I go to. But you know, Big Narstie’s right: you can’t cheat on your barber.
Rag’n’Bone Man’s
Human is out 10 February. RAY BLK’s
Patience (Freestyle) is out now.
