I don't look at myself as identifying with a role or having to be "Raury" or this person. It's not even anything like, Oh, I'm not going to say this in my song because this person says this in their song and that's their role, or whatever. R: I just talk about what lies in my heart. TV: Are there certain topics that you don't touch, then? That's why I make music to inspire kids my age to become better versions of themselves. Some albums that some people listen to will lead them down the wrong path. I noticed that album was leading me down a path of self-belief. I'd like to do that for other people with my music because that's when I realized how powerful music was. It's really what encouraged me to chase music as a music career. Cudi's album was completely about being that different person and being okay with it and owning it. So by the time I was 14, I felt even more alienated. Every now and then growing up, I always had to worry about that but it also imprinted in my brain that I wasn't like other people. All my life, I always heard, what, that's a weird name. I was born with the name Raury, so just based off of that, I grew up with the stigma of.I was always treated differently because my name wasn't Josh or Keith or something normal. It helped me get comfortable in my own skin. The one thing that got me out of that rut definitely had to be Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon album. So I was writing songs about how alone and just.sad I felt. I was writing not only music, but I also had journals talking about my day. I was writing because I felt like I didn't have a choice. You think about OG Maco and ILoveMakonnen. But it just started off with just a teenager garnering the respect of his hometown before he even steps out into the world.
I had my first festival - we called it RaurFest, but it was really just me performing and like 500 people showed up before the project was even out. We released the project when I was 17, 18, and it really just took off.
From that point on, I dropped "God's Whisper". Kenny Burns picked up on it, and it was getting so much attention. Word about me had spread really quick in Atlanta so when I released my first song and project, the people really took to it, especially in the musical scene in Atlanta. You know, if New York is like a university, Atlanta may be the middle school as far as how well you can rub elbows with people and build authentic relationships without even really trying because you see them everywhere, so imagine a 15-year-old doing that for three years, being on the scene like a 23-year-old would be somewhere. And within this three-year span of recording music and starting over, in Atlanta, we built up such a buzz because we were in these studios and we were meeting these people.Ītlanta's a small place. But the thing about it is that I was never trying to release the project until it was perfect. He was at school, and all of his roommates just chipped in and got me studio time, and we were just growing. So you know, 15-year-old artist and 19-year-old manager at this point, so we were pretty young when we started. And by the time I'm 15, I meet this guy over here, Justice, who was 19 when I met him. I started writing some of the most sad songs in my room, locked away, and saving up lunch money so I could go to the studio and record. I was in my first years in high school, and lost so many friends, so I started writing music. By the time I was 14, I was in a really dark place, dealing with depression. Raury: I was probably about 11 years old, begging my mom to get me a guitar, and I didn't get one until the next year, and never put it down. Teen Vogue: How did you start in the industry? And he wants to take everyone else along for the ride. But neither of these things seem to exist in the humble and self-aware teenager, who's friends with Willow and Tavi and Jaden, and knows he is on the verge of something much larger than himself. He has the kind of soft-spoken self-assuredness that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find in someone his age. The album veers from rap to song and back again, soft and introspective one minute, inquisitive another, disappointed the next. His music defies categorization - Is it hip-hop? Is it soul? Is it folk? Is it all three? Is it rock? Is it more? It's definitely more - and you get the sense that Raury likes it that way. Now on his second album, All We Need, and with a bigger platform, he has even more to say.and even more people who will be listening. Raury is a 19-year-old artist from Atlanta, whose first EP, Indigo Child, turned heads and made people ask, "Who is that?" Atlanta knew, of course, because Atlanta is an epicenter of music.