“Shortly after the release of her debut album, My 21st Century Blues, the British musician Raye posted a TikTok with the caption “I find myself in a great position,” an inversion of a line (“I find myself in a shit position”) from her breakup anthem with 070 Shake, “Escapism.” The song, which has been used in more than a million TikToks and streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, has become inescapable since it came out last fall. The caption accompanies a video of Raye beaming triumphantly, strategically filmed near the offices of the label with which she parted ways in 2021, after it refused to take on what is now her critically acclaimed record. “I waited seven years to release this,” she says on its final track. “Finally, My 21st Century Blues is ours, forever.”
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