Artist Interview: Linda-Ray finds beauty in the overgrown

Fresh off the road with her third album, A New Era, Linda-Ray talks GarageBand beginnings, loyalty to her producer, and why she’s in no hurry to get back into the studio. 

Linda-Ray is not an artist who suffers from scarcity. Day jobs, music and passion overflow for her, and so does the experimentation on her third studio album, A New Era. It begins as a fairly traditional hip-hop/R&B record and slips into a darker, crooning sound, carried by bouncing, effortless flows that are equal parts confident and vulnerable.

Like Steve Lacy, PinkPantheress and Grimes before her, Linda-Ray started out with a phone and a free app. “I was 14, and I’d just got an iPhone. Oh my goodness, I’ll never forget that day. The iPhone had GarageBand, and I didn’t realise how much I was into music until I found myself making beats, singing on them, and editing and mixing everything myself”.

For those artists, messing around on GarageBand turned into breakout albums and Grammy-nominated projects. Artistry has never needed top-of-the-range software to flourish. Sometimes all it takes is a curious 14-year-old girl in South Africa with the freedom to create.

After putting out early projects on SoundCloud, Linda-Ray decided it was time to widen her practice and work with other artists. She found her people in an artist called Remo and his best friend, a producer called DNA. “I was protected for a while by those two guys. To this day, all my beats are made by DNA. I have such loyalty to him. I’m determined that if I ever make it, it’ll be with one of his beats”.

Her loyalty sits alongside a restless streak. Linda-Ray is a natural leader who actively resists being pigeonholed, and she takes comfort in the idea that the risks she takes might spur other artists to take their own. “Sometimes people have made me feel like I don’t have a sense of direction, or that I don’t know what I want to do, just because I want to do a lot of things. But all of that leads to you finding yourself as an artist. It’s so important that we take risks”.

Her influences reach well beyond music. “It’s not just Beyoncé’s music that inspires me. It’s her ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude. Like, you’re not going to box me into a category. That, and the attention to detail”. Doechii, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar are other favourites whose music and self-presentation strike a chord. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be known for your music alone. But when it comes to the greats, their style, energy and inexpressible artistry precede them, for better or for worse.

Linda-Ray admits she’s in a transitional phase. Instead of waiting for clarity, she used that uncertainty to make A New Era an archive of her present. “I really wanted to encourage artists to lean into being a bit frantic if they don’t really know where life is going”. On ‘Charged Up’, she describes taking other people’s negative views and using them as fuel instead of letting them defeat her.

The album is as much a lesson in tenacity as it is an ambitious, experimental LP. That flows straight into the aesthetics with its overgrown woodland imagery, dancers dressed in earth tones, and moss covering every square inch of the stage. “No one wants to be in overgrown places that you might think look ugly, but I find moss beautiful. Moss grows after something has been abandoned for a really long time. It’s about finding beauty where you can”.

Bringing that world to the stage was a real juggling act. “It was a bit stressful”, she says of the tour. “I’ve toured before as an actor with a production company, but this time it was my own company producing the tour, and I was the lead contact as well as the artist”.

Multi-disciplinary artistry is all but expected in today’s music landscape. One person encompasses the backing singer, tour manager, producer and marketer. Each role matters in its own right, and each is a cog in the machine that keeps your Spotify New Music Friday playlist fresh. For many independent artists, that’s an uncomfortable reality, but Linda-Ray welcomes it with open arms.

“You have to sell so much more than just your music, your personality, your band, your look, everything. (On tour) With the London audience, a lot of them were like, ‘Who the hell is this girl? Who is this person on stage?’ But it was an amazing experience. It hasn’t scared me away from touring again”.

If anything, the tour showed her what’s working. And with three albums already out, she isn’t itching to get back into the studio just yet. It’s easy to get sucked into the never-ending spiral of produce, release, perform and repeat, but she sees no reason to rush. “People have described my shows this year as an experience, a theatre performance. So right now, I’m leaning into what’s working. For the first time as an artist, I feel like I’ve found a bit of ground. Not a clear picture just yet, but I’m going to hold on to that feeling instead of rushing”.

Linda-Ray is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Zimbabwe and based in Leeds. She is an actress and musician who founded her own production company, Ray Productions, in 2023. Her third studio album ‘A New Era’ is available for purchase and streaming now on all major platforms, including Spotify.