You might have certain expectations of an unsigned artist playing what is only her third ever headline show. Emerging R&B singer Ray BLK should be talking too shrilly between songs, nerves overwriting her prepared bons mots. You would bank on a few icy R&B covers as well, to pad out the running time and signpost her now-ness, and the odd glance stolen between band members. Brio would be likely to trump competence.
Instead, Ray BLK – it’s actually “black”, not “bee-ell-kay” – strides on stage like a lioness, every inch the finished article. Tossing ropes of hair, hitting all the notes with ease, the winner of the BBC’s Sound of 2017 poll is playing what already feels like a greatest hits set with a band who can segue between hip-hop breakbeats and jazzy licks before throwing back to 90s US R&B.
The industry metric declares that Ray has yet to release a debut album – Durt, from 2016, was technically a mini-album – but all the important decisions have been made, and made soundly, without the input of a major label. Ray mostly sings, but, like her lodestar Lauryn Hill before her, it’s with a reflexive command of hip-hop in her cadences, and truth-telling in her sights. The covers the south Londoner does choose aren’t at all current, but two vintage, girl-positive crowd-pleasers – Say My Name by Destiny’s Child and Don’t Let Go by En Vogue. Although the 90s clearly loom large in Ray BLK’s iTunes – one song, Hunny, starts its second verse with a lift from Lauryn Hill – her own tunes are fiercely local. BLK sings pointedly about “caffs not cafes”.
Her influences range far. Those hard-hitting urban antiheroes the Cardigans crop up at the start of the excellent 5050, a skeletal half-sung, half-rapped tour de force: “Love me, love me, say that you love me,” Ray sings, “’cos if you ain’t trying to wife me you need to get off my line.” There are no forced transatlantic compromises, the better to sell in a North American market, just Ray expressing lust, love and points in between.
BLK sorts the boys from the men, from the friends with benefits; some, she’ll only see “on a Friday/ with some high-grade” (Chill Out). It’s actually startling how fresh it feels to hear an R&B singer being frank about desire and nonchalant about ill-defined hook-ups, rather than merely expressing a kind of rote sexiness. Breezy set opener Westside Story lists locations where Ray and her love interest might do the dirty: the sofa, the kitchen, the garden, the roof, the Uber. Her music, meanwhile, is both synth-y and contemporary – thanks to young producers such as Aston Rudi and SG Lewis, who guests on Chill Out – and confidently classic.
Such is BLK’s stature already, she can command not one but two grime superstars to come along and lay down their verses next to her. Veteran rapper Wretch 32 is in the house for Gone, a sparring duet in which two parties examine the end of a relationship. At its close, Wretch praises “my little sister, my compadre, my next-door neighbour, my friend, my everything”. It’s a pretty accurate description of BLK’s strengths: Ray’s songs are direct and candid, and her no-bullshit demeanour leaves plenty of latitude for warmth. Her songs tend to tell stories about women like her, full of specifics yet reaching for universals all the while.
The “caffs not cafes” line comes from My Hood, BLK’s finest and most nagging tune to date. It features fellow south Londoner Stormzy, whose album is now at No 1.
When the MC comes on for his verse, the place becomes a sea of smartphone screens, topped with a light surf of pure joy, one of those moments where you can actually feel invisible cogs turning as one possible future becomes the present. Together, the two of them sing the praises of their gritty “ends”, turning south London into a place of bittersweet fable. You could rank My Hood alongside Adele’s Hometown Glory as a London anthem, but tonight it actually has something of the grandeur of Empire State of Mind by Jay Z and Alicia Keys. Stormzy isn’t just phoning it in on the way to an awards ceremony, either – he sings along with Ray’s parts, she raps along with his and at the end, they hug like actual friends who have twigged their moment has arrived.
