RAYE celebrated the release of her debut album “My 21st Century Blues” by installing a structure on the cover outside the office of her former record label.
The artist had a hard time to release her debut album. Despite signing a contract with Polydor to release four albums in 2014, in 2021 she stated that the label did not allow her to release an album, and three weeks later her contract was released.
Now that her debut has finally come out, RAYE celebrated this event by erecting an installation on the cover of “My 21st Century Blues” near the Polydor office. “Maybe I was petty and built this installation in front of my old record label,” she said in TikTok. The video was accompanied by the caption “I’m in a great position” in an inversion of the lyric “I’m in a shitty position” from her recent number one hit “Escapism”.
In a four-star review of “My 21st Century Blues,” NME wrote: RAYE recently said that [her] bold and bold statements wouldn’t have been made public if she was still signed to a major label. Nevertheless, despite her creative independence, the hard-fought “My Blues of the 21st Century” is definitely RAYE from beginning to end.”
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RAYE also recently spoke about her “dangerous” experience of substance abuse in the past, which was related to her experience of sexual abuse and her dissatisfaction with her career. Lyrics from her song “Ice-Cream Man” revealed that she was sexually assaulted by an unnamed producer.
“When you keep things in this state, they eat away at you from the inside,” Ray told the BBC. “And for me, unfortunately, substance abuse was associated with the numbness of the trauma I experienced.”
She continued, “I went pretty deep, and at some point it became very dangerous.”
