Over the course of her career, Rachel Chinouriri’s trajectory has turned into something of a case study of modern artist development. On the eve of her debut album What A Devastating Turn Of Events, Music Week meets the genre-blending singer, plus Parlophone and Atlas Artists, to hear how a mix of fierce commitment and patience is paving the way for a mainstream breakthrough...
WORDS: ANNA FIELDING PHOTOS/LIVE PHOTO: LAUREN HARRIS
Rachel Chinouriri has been searching for her place in the world for quite some time.
“I’ve always been looking for home, looking for what it would mean to me,” she says. “I’m someone who wants stability in her life.”
More on that quest shortly. For the time being, the singer’s current physical place of residence is her flat in East London. Wearing black-and-green tie-dye leggings and a hoodie made by internet superstar Quenlin Blackwell, she opts to sit stretching her legs out on the floor for our interview, even though she has a perfectly functioning desk just steps away. Either side of her chat with Music Week, she’s having a sorting day at home.
“I went a bit viral on Twitter yesterday,” she says. “So I’ve been replying to everyone, liking comments, just general social media housekeeping. Then there’s been some life admin, too.”
Today, that includes therapy, housework, bill paying and trying her best to stick to healthy routines. Yes, Chinouriri is quite literally putting her house in order to prepare for the next big moment in her career – the launch of her debut album, What A Devastating Turn Of Events, released on May 3 via Parlophone/Atlas Artists.
Chinouriri has been working towards this moment for seven years and has a solid base to spring from. A former BRIT School student, she has been writing songs since she was 17, and working with her manager Duncan Ellis of Atlas Artists since graduating. To date, she has released numerous singles and EPs via Atlas’ JV with Parlophone, starting with 2018’s So My Darling. In 2021, meanwhile, Chinouriri was shortlisted for the Ivor Novello Rising Star Award and in 2023 appeared on the BBC Sound Of… list. The hype around her name also led to a booking at this year’s SXSW festival, only for the singer to pull out upon finding out about the event’s sponsorship deal with the US Army.
Still, even without the Texan showcase, she has an avid audience ready and waiting (close to 1.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 22.2 million likes on TikTok) for What A Devastating Turn Of Events. The record should mark the point where Chinouriri’s star is no longer described as rising.
“I’ve never charted before, so it would be nice to,” she says. “I kind of feel I deserve it now. And look, an award would be great, I’d probably burst into tears if I got a BRIT because I watched them so much growing up.”
Chinouriri makes her point without ego, almost as if she’s daydreaming. She is on much firmer ground talking about the work she’s already put into the album, even though the genesis of What A Devastating Turn Of Events was a feeling of instability.
“I think that growing up I always felt slightly unstable,” she says. “I thought at 18, I would have a job and a house, and at 21, I realised I did not have those things and I was really broke. My mum is a super hard worker and it was giving me a degree of anxiety because I know she came to this country so that I could take a more academic route. And I absolutely did not do that.”
These days, her family is fiercely proud of her achievements. Chinouriri is the youngest of five and the only one of her siblings to be born in the UK and not Zimbabwe.
“I once wrote a song called Home that was about me trying to figure out where to place myself,” she says. “I always felt like the odd one out being Black in the UK, but then also because I am the only one of my family born here and the only one who can’t speak [Zimbabwe’s] native language. Everyone in my family home speaks Shona, but they speak to me in English.”
There have been further feelings of dislocation and moments of pain. As one of the very few Black students at her first secondary school, she was badly bullied and the target of racial abuse.
“It was one of the most degrading human experiences I’ve had in my life,” she told Music Week in our 2023 On The Radar interview. Then, as her career began to take shape, she found she was often pegged and promoted as an R&B or soul singer, despite the fact that her sound was rooted in indie and pop. Chinouriri proceeds to outline a journey of self-discovery.
“I realised the UK was my home,” she says. “I shouldn’t want to change that because I’ve had an incredible journey. I started looking at my career and being grateful for the one I’ve had, the people I’ve met, the music I’ve made and knowing that I wouldn’t have had that if I wasn’t here. Home is what you make it.”
The striking cover for What A Devastating Turn Of Events shows Chinouriri outside a 1970s terraced house with tiny England flags hanging from the windows, kids’ toys in the garden and takeaway boxes littered outside.
“When I look back at the Britpop era there was Blur, or the Spice Girls, and there were flags everywhere and, as a young kid, I could see people being proud to be British,” Chinouriri says. “As a Black person, that can feel quite controversial because, obviously, the history the UK has with other countries, especially Black and POC countries, is very dark. But when the football’s on you see all the bunting around and it’s a celebration and every single race is in the pub together like we’ve all forgotten everything that’s happened, everyone’s hanging out.”
She carefully articulates the other side to her point.
“But when you see that flag and Black people aren’t competing in the Olympics or on the football pitch…
Well, no one’s being celebrated,” she says. “So I am celebrating coming home. I’m raising the flag to say, ‘England is my home, the UK is my home.’ But that doesn’t always mean it was a positive experience and there’s trauma that came from that. But I am including those flags. They’ve made me the person I am today and I love that person. I love living here. I love the community I’ve made and the friends and family I have.”
A significant part of that community is Atlas Artists, with whom she has had a longstanding relationship.
“I met [founder] Duncan Ellis when I was 17, still at the BRIT School, and he’d heard my song on BBC Introducing,” she recalls. “At the same time, I’d also been spam messaging him because I’d found his name online. He hadn’t seen the messages, but he had heard my song. So I’ve known him for eight years, worked with him for seven and he’s always been there to manage changes in my life. And I am someone who hates change.”
She also values Atlas execs Linda Maitland (“Having someone with that experience on my team who is not a man when the industry is so male-heavy”) and Hope James (“She is the same age as me, but with so much experience, we pair really well together”).
Ellis’ admiration for his artist is abundantly clear.
“Rachel’s journey as an artist is almost archetypal,” he says. “I think that’s why younger people and new artists always want to speak to her about things. It gives them hope, but also a reality check. But every year with Rachel has been a necessary year – she shows people that this isn’t for the faint-hearted, that this is what it’s going to look like and these are some of the sacrifices that will have to be made. But if you can keep yourself afloat for seven years, you really begin to reap the rewards of the journey.”
Chinouriri’s relationship with Parlophone has been another anchor of stability, even as the label went through significant change last year as it joined forces with Warner Records under the stewardship of president Joe Kentish and MD Jen Ivory.
Chinouriri learned of the departure of various members of staff, including former co-presidents Nick Burgess and Mark Mitchell, whilst walking in the Herefordshire countryside.
“I was writing and recording my album and the farmer next door had gone through a cable and taken out our Wi-Fi,” she recalls. “It was actually kind of fortunate, because there was no phone reception either, so I went for a walk one day, got a bunch of messages on my phone and thought, quite calmly, ‘Oh, what’s happening here?’ Then I went back to the house where there was no Wi-Fi, but there was a pheasant called Jerry and a cat called Matilda. It was probably the perfect environment to hear big news!”
“Lots of acts were let go,” says Ellis. “But we remained and therefore we had more focus and more time with people and there was a new energy coming into the label. We all benefited from that, so it has been wonderful for us, but I’m sure if you spoke to another team or other artists their experience may be completely different.”
Chinouriri is pleased with life under Kentish and Ivory’s leadership.
“They’re bloody incredible,” she says, with a grin. “They’re like bundles of joy walking around the office. Jen, as a woman, really gets the vision. And she’s also a woman who loves indie. Joe understands so many aspects of being Black in the industry and has worked with some incredible musicians. Having the support of the two of them has been quite remarkable… It’s such a positive space to be in.”
Ivory herself is similarly complimentary.
“I took over at Parlophone last March, but even before that I was such a big fan of Rachel,” she says. “I was at Warner [previously], a sister label in the building, and I was always a fan and quite jealous that I never got to work with her.”
Once Ivory got into her new role, Chinouriri and her team were already in full swing with the album campaign.
“The label had a lot of changes, but where Rachel was at was very impressive and we picked up from there,” Ivory smiles. “She was actually just the second artist I met and she came bounding into my office. There were immediate hugs and I was so pleased because she is exactly who I thought she would be. She is full of energy and joy and youth, but at the same time really reflective about who she is as an artist and what she wants to communicate with her work. The world building that Rachel has been doing, the reclaiming of her Britishness, her Englishness.”
As for the aforementioned discussion around the pigeonholing of Chinouriri’s sound, Ivory and the rest of the team give the impression that it is firmly a thing of the past.
“I didn’t see any ambiguity at all,” reasons Ivory. “Her music, her references, are so apparent. Musically, I would say she’s migrating slightly towards pop, which puts her firmly in an indie-pop space, which I think is a really comfortable space for her to be in and a really great place for now.”
Ivory also notes that the clarity of Chinouriri’s vision was a huge help in terms of securing industry support.
“When we started positioning the album at the end of last year, we were able to present full creative to media and DSPs,” she says. “Having the album cover, photos and the world Rachel had created, with all the music done, was so impactful. Everyone, especially the DSPs, we feel, has really bought into that.”
Chinouriri is confident in what her record can do.
“When I think about what I want to achieve, I also think about what it would represent for the industry as a whole,” she says. “I think about what VV Brown has said, what Keisha from the Sugababes or Shingai from the Noisettes have said about the industry and how their momentum was almost stopped because it was thought that they should go a different route…”
But these days, Chinouriri says, the parameters are starting to shift.
“I’d say that kind of stereotyping has broken down a bit,” she says. “But perhaps that’s easy for me to say because I’m part of some very progressive conversations. I think those changes will probably have more impact on the generation after me, artists like Flowerovlove and the people who come after her.”
But the path that Chinouriri really wants to pursue is one of joy.
“I feel like I have the ability to be up there with the indie-pop girlies,” she says. “There are people like SZA, like Coco Jones, but I think that Black women are often framed in terms of the hardships they’ve been through, the need to be tough and strong. I want to show that Black women can be joyful, can be young teens, can be into hair clips and be free and fun. I’m not saying that isn’t there – I mean, there’s Willow Smith and Chlöe x Halle – but they’re all American and I’m a Black British woman and I think I’d have a different take.”
One of the tasks Chinouriri has been doing, in the quiet moments during this pre-album period, is replying to fan mail. She writes the letters by hand and then goes off and posts them herself.
“It’s better than social media,” she reasons. “Social media has made this world where you feel you’re connected to someone, but you’re not really. I feel that the craft of letter writing is more personal.
“There was one girl who really wanted to get into music and she’s Black and indie, but she didn’t know how to navigate it and had a lot of insecurities about it,” she continues. “Her speaking about that in a letter was quite endearing because it takes me back to when I was younger. I know exactly how she feels and the hesitations she feels, but obviously I just went for it – and for me, life really panned out.”
Chinouriri is of a generation where expressing a dislike for certain elements of social-media culture doesn’t equate to a lack of comfort engaging with the various platforms.
“Rachel grew up in an age of social media,” says Duncan Ellis. “I don’t want to say it’s easy for her, because that would take away from the fact that what’s expected of artists on social media can be a very big ask these days; it’s a demand and it’s challenging. But it’s obviously a very good way to connect with people and with your fanbase or new audiences, and she’s able to be herself on it. She doesn’t pull punches and she’s very funny. She wears her heart on her sleeve.”
Younger music fans, says Ellis, are searching for relatable pop stars, rather than untouchable, mysterious icons.
“They want the openness, they want to be able to connect on an emotional level,” he says. “That starts, first and foremost, with the music, but then what Rachel can do is then speak to them, too, and that’s really powerful.”
Chinouriri is happy to chat on social media, but feels it’s pointless to chase success via the algorithm.
“I thought about it for a bit and then realised it’s really not something I want to do and also it doesn’t work,” she says. “I’ve seen enough of the industry to see people get super popular in trends, sky-rocketing high with their career based off of a trend of a certain time, and then you see them four or five years down the line and they’re not doing anything at all.”
We talk in the wake of Universal Music Group announcing its decision to pull its music from TikTok, and she views the fall-out with the same sense of balance.
“TikTok is an app that runs on music, on trends in music and on editing music, so to take off such a vast amount [of content] is a very big move to make,” she says. “But Universal existed before TikTok and will exist after TikTok, so I guess they thought they didn’t need it for their marketing. Artists of my age and younger don’t know a world of marketing outside of social media, so it will be very interesting to see what changes and what other marketing techniques come to the fore.”
Clearly, Chinouriri is a keen observer on the mechanics of artist breakthroughs.
“Everyone thinks that you can only blow up if you go viral on TikTok and that has very much been a focus, but I don’t think that is the truth,” the singer says. “I think TikTok is an incredible tool for promotion, but I also think there is an art and beauty in an artist building gradually over time, in a stable, small way. I think it will be beautiful to go back to that. This could remove the pressure from musicians to feel that they have to have a TikTok [moment].”
The rising spectre of AI, however, “is something I’m basically too terrified to think about,” the singer admits.
For now, Chinouriri and her team are focused on realising her dreams and ambitions, building towards her stated aim of building a career that spans at least 20 years and five albums.
“I want to know where each album will take me and what each one will say about that specific time in my life,” she says. “Every step we’ve taken with Rachel so far has been a building block,” says Ellis. “She has had a great deal of support, but she’s never been a real industry darling. But we’ve built so much. I’m really looking forward to seeing what she can be.”
“We have various festivals coming up and Rachel is going to be great at all of them,” says Ivory. “We have real ambitions to see her through and see her right. She’s a long-term career artist for Parlophone.”
As for Chinouriri? She has own idea of what that future looks like.
“I want to sell 10,000 tickets for one show at one venue, at least once in my lifetime,” she smiles as we part ways.
“I think if I can hit the tens-of-thousands level, that would be something. I could die happy.”
