Kanye West<\/a>‘s new release Bully at number three.<\/p>\nRAYE recently suggested that making her second album had been a gruelling process that she had put every “blood cell” into getting right.<\/p>\n
\nShe confessed on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music: “It\u2019s taken every blood cell.<\/p>\n
\n“If I wasn\u2019t on a stage, I was pouring into this body of work. I\u2019m honestly exhausted \u2014 mentally and physically \u2014 but in a good way.”<\/p>\n
\nThe Escapism artist detailed how she took total creative control on the record, acting as executive producer whilst writing every lyric and melody as well as working with orchestras, big bands and a sizeable cast of musicians.<\/p>\n
\nShe said: “It\u2019s been a labour of absolute passion and love.”<\/p>\n
\nRAYE also revealed that the album became a quiet act of rebellion after years spent writing to order for other artists.<\/p>\n
\nShe said: “There\u2019s a subconscious rebellion in there. For so long everything had to be simple, minimal, to brief \u2014 this BPM, this length, this vibe. It was a miserable existence for me.”<\/p>\n
\nThe singer added that being told she “didn\u2019t know who she was” only fuelled the fire: “How can I define myself when you keep sending me into rooms with strangers to write top lines in a day?”<\/p>\n
\nRAYE said she refused to shrink herself to fit the industry\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n
\nShe insisted: \u201cI\u2019m not just one thing.<\/p>\n
\n“I\u2019ve grown up with many cultures \u2014 my identity isn\u2019t one thing. So how can you ask me to choose one thing? On this record I embraced maximalism\u2026 any genre I wanted to explore, I did.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.femalefirst.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4 April 2026 RAYE has topped the UK Albums Chart for the first time with her new release This Music May Contain Hope. RAYE is at the top of the UK Albums Chart for the first time The 28-year-old singer went straight in at number one on Friday (03.04.26) with her latest record, eclipsing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2358283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[24510,367642,346976,351507],"class_list":["post-2358282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-kanye-west","tag-olivia-dean","tag-raye","tag-zane-lowe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RAYE-tops-UK-Albums-Chart-for-first-time-with-This.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2358282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2358284,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358282\/revisions\/2358284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2358283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}