Griff and Rachel Chinouriri Didn’t Fit Into the Typical Pop Mold — So They Created Their Own

In late June, the singer-songwriter Griff stood in front of thousands at London’s Wembley Stadium and revealed just how far she was once willing to go for love. “You know, if you told me to run, jump, throw my body right off of a high-wire bridge ‘cause you’d meet me at the bottom,” she sang, “I would’ve done anything you wanted.”

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It was the first time she had ever performed “Anything,” a single from her debut album, Vertigo , released in July — and that particular stage was a hell of a place to do so: The 23-year-old was opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour. At an earlier point in her career, she wasn’t certain that pop audiences would be that hungry for those dramatic, confessional performances from someone like her.

“I always saw myself and my career as being more of a songwriter,” the Jamaican-Chinese and British musician tells Rolling Stone. “I don’t know if it was a conscious thing, but I didn’t ever see myself as someone that would be sellable or desirable in this space, because it’s just nothing I’ve ever seen.” Griff had a very specific viewpoint growing up in largely white, middle-class English suburbia. Mostly Black kids attended her church, and her parents fostered children from every background, which meant that her home was an ever-changing collage of identity. “I’ve just existed in many different pockets of culture, and I think that maybe I ran to music to give me confidence in the midst of me trying to understand where I fit in the world,” Griff says. “I knew that when I would sit at the piano and write songs, I felt at peace and I felt good. I think often I didn’t quite know if I felt that in other social contexts.”

Pop music at the moment largely thrives on the prospect — or trap, really — of relatability. Women are often positioned like mirrors: They stand in front of their audiences and reflect a version of themselves back. The music becomes for everyone and no one at all. But artists like Griff, as well as fellow British pop girls Rachel Chinouriri and Raye, have found a loophole in the futile pursuit of palatability: As non-white women, their perception of ego, self-esteem, and relationships already aren’t granted the same validity. And as it turns out, not having a mold to fit into has granted them the freedom of sprawling, indulgent creativity as songwriters, producers, and performers.

“I’ve come from a family of immigrants and war veterans, so growing up even the trauma is very dark, and dark things are not something which people were scared to speak about,” says Chinouriri, 25, who grew up in London under the careful watch of her Zimbabwean parents, both former child soldiers.

She inherited a hardened, matter-of-fact way of communicating from them. But initially, she felt it didn’t have a place in her indie music. At 16, she attended the BRIT School — a creative institution which has an alumni roster featuring Amy Winehouse, Adele, and Raye — and tried a metaphoric approach to songwriting. “I was all in these poetic things like, ‘My heavy heart stain is just a blood stain, here in plain view.’ I’d say weird shit like that, and be like, ‘Yeah, it’s so deep and artsy,’” she explains. “And then afterwards, when people didn’t understand it, I was like, ‘Why the fuck aren’t you lots understanding what the hell I’m saying?’”

Consider the lesson learned. Chinouriri played it straight across her debut album, What a Devastating Turn of Events , released in May — and it proved to be one of her greatest strengths. She comically takes herself to task for letting undeserving men waste her time on “Dumb Bitch Juice” and “It Is What It Is,” and eviscerates those same romantic prospects on “Never Need Me.”

On other entries, like “My Blood” and “I Hate Myself,” she crafts vivid depictions of depressive episodes, suicidal ideations, and disordered eating. And the record’s title track is a straightforward, culturally informed play-by-play of the death of her cousin, who died by suicide after unexpectedly becoming pregnant. “When I spoke about eating disorders, self-harm, suicide, death, and being robbed of people, I was kind of like, ‘If I allow this to be and speak about it in a’ — I don’t want to say nonchalant way, but very openly — ‘then it allows people to normalize that kind of feeling,’” she explains.

Griff had a similar experience as a musician. “I want to write in a way that people can put their own pain in it and really feel it,” she says. It’s an approach she learned from listening to great R&B and gospel musicians like Whitney Houston and Mary Mary, respectively, who repurposed pain through powerful vocal performances. “There’s a different pain that isn’t like the kind of conventional, diaristic cursive singing that we’re in at the moment, or have just gone through,” Griff adds. “There’s a different gut pain that I think has really influenced me.”

Across her album Vertigo, she dissects the hurt that often accompanies change across nearly every type of relationship. “Everlasting,” for example, roots itself in generational and cultural pressures. “It’s almost about, as a kid, growing up and being the last one to flee the nest,” she says. “I think the guilt of that carries different weights because of culture as well.” Elsewhere, “Miss Me Too” mourns the version of herself that she lost to coming-of-age experiences, and “Pillow in My Arms” unravels in the solitude that follows the end of a relationship. “I almost was in a place writing this where I felt very numb in moments and very lost. With all of these songs, there’s so many dramatic feelings because it was almost me trying to move myself and trying to stir up something in myself,” Griff explains. “I think it’s up to creatives and writers to be as interesting and dramatic and honest as possible.”

There are few artists who understand the priceless value of drama and theatrics in pop performance like Raye, another leader in this space. In June, the Ghanaian-Swiss and British singer released the seven-minute-long opus “Genesis.” Within the first 30 seconds of the record, she spits: “I’ve been sober for some months/But I can feel the demons waiting on my downfall/Since I’m so ugly and irrelevant/I’ve been losing friends as if I’m tryna get rid of them/I googled why I’m still desperate for validation and sedatives, huh/Callin’ men who don’t givе a fuck about me/Then when my mother called I pretend I’m busy.” The 27-year-old spent two years recording and perfecting “Genesis,” which breaks down into three genre-spanning sections that encapsulate everything from big-band jazz and gospel to R&B, hip-hop, and pop.

The record’s commentary on mental health, suicide, addiction, politics, and self-esteem tie back to the themes across Raye’s debut album, My 21st Century Blues . The LP arrived in February 2023, complete with the breakout single “ Escapism ” and the chilling standout “ Ice Cream Man ,” a gut-wrenching account of her experience with sexual assault. “I’m a very fucking brave, strong woman/And I’ll be damned if I let a man ruin/How I walk, how I talk, how I do it,” Raye sings on the record, which she co-produced with Mike Sabath and BloodPop. She embraces this expectation of strength — often weaponized against Black women to police their emotional reactions — with raw glimpses of genuine weakness.

For years, while working behind the scenes as an underpaid and underappreciated songwriter , Raye fought tooth and nail to eventually be granted this level of creative authority. In an essay for British Vogue published earlier this year, she wrote about having her musical space “tainted” by the grueling realities of the music industry. “I was losing my identity,” she said. “I grew up with so many different cultures. Gospel, soul, jazz, and R&B were what I felt connected to as an artist, and what that first album I’d always planned on sounded like. At the label, I was being cut off from my roots. But I’d talk to male peers and find out that they had more creative control. Meanwhile everything I wanted needed vetting.”

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Griff has been the primary producer of her own music since the start of her career, and yet she still questions her claim to that label: “I almost wonder whether I had to become an artist in order to also exist as a female producer, because it means that I can call the shots and my chances of songs coming out, getting into rooms, and actually seeing songs live in the world are higher — because I’m the artist.” Griff notes that A&Rs are often reluctant to take the risk of allowing women to helm production, typically opting to bring in a “hit guy” to complete a record rather than trusting their intuition. She felt inspired by PinkPantheress being awarded Producer of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards earlier this year. “As an industry, we take female talent and we want to sell it more than we want to nurture it,” she adds.

Every year, USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative breaks down the gender and race statistics from the credits on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart. In January, it reported a number of all-time highs: Women recording artists on the year-end Hot 100 grew to 35 percent in 2023 from around 30 percent in 2022. Women songwriters reached nearly 20 percent of all the credited writers, up more than five percent and a record high in the past decade. And the number of women serving as producers hit a record high of 6.5 percent. Despite slight progress, it’s evident just how pitiful these statistics really are — especially in the face of the additional standards and conditions reserved for non-white women pursuing careers in these sectors.

“There’s a scale of talent which you are allowed to have if you are white and still be successful, whereas for Black people, that scale is … you need to be the best singer on the planet, pitch-perfect, dance, look good, have long hair,” Chinouriri explains. “I like singing my little songs on my guitar. I can’t belt. I can just about sing loudly. I like hair clips. I’m not that good at my own hair. My natural hair isn’t that long. I’m not very good at makeup. However, those can’t be the only factors that people respect me as a musician for, and I think human connection is the biggest thing.”

She cites a pivotal moment where a group of young Black girls showed up at one of her shows with their hair styled like hers. “Thank you for making me feel like I can dress like this and come out like this,” they told her. “I think that was the moment where I thought, ‘Maybe I’m doing something quite special in a sense of making Black girls feel like they can be complimented and made to feel beautiful and stunning in those spaces,” Chinouriri recalls. She’s proud to share that influence with the other women occupying this space, like singer-songwriters Olivia Dean and Cat Burns.

That impact resonates more with Chinouriri than online discourse or numbers on a screen. The singer finds herself frequently being labeled as “underrated” by well-meaning social media users hoping to boost her profile. One viral post about “Never Need Me,” which features a video cameo from actress Florence Pugh, has more than 8 million views. Another shows an audience of thousands screaming “All I Ever Asked” back to her during her performance at the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. “I get to this level, then everyone’s like, ‘She’s so underrated, she needs way more listeners.’ And I’m like, I got 1.7 million people listening to me every month on one app. I can’t even count 1.7 million people in my brain,” she says, noting her Spotify stats.

Are those figures true markers of artistic validity? Or is it ticket sales and chart positions? Chinouriri is learning not to care, either way. “I think, before, it used to bother me,” she admits. “But then I also was like, what does that look like for me?” Asking the question of what exactly that bar is, and who gets to set it, spotlights just how disproportionately disadvantaged non-white women are as pop musicians — and just how much of a waste of time it would be for them to spend their career striving to reach milestones intentionally set out of their reach. “The bar is so much higher, and by the time you’ve even hit that bar, you’re probably, like, 10-plus years into your career,” Chinouriri adds.

That same “underrated” label followed artists like Tinashe and Victoria Monét for years as they built their own catalogs while facing industry setbacks. Chinouriri points to Monét — who cut her teeth as a songwriter for Ariana Grande, Chloë x Halle, Fifth Harmony, and others — as a primary example. Last year, the R&B phenom was turned down for a performance slot at the MTV Video Music Awards. “My team was told it is ‘too early in my story’ for that opportunity,” Monét revealed on social media. Four months later, she won three Grammy Awards including Best New Artist.

“I’ve been seeing her dancing and singing onstage religiously for most of my own career, and she’s inspired me,” Chinouriri says. “To even sing and dance at that level, the amount of training you need to do is ridiculous — and that’s only for her to just about start getting the flowers that she deserves. If she’s not ready, then I don’t even have a bloody chance.”

If anything, the story is a testament to moving forward even when the road hasn’t already been smoothly paved. “I definitely think there is that subconscious thought of ‘We know she’s talented, we don’t really know what to do next with her,’” Griff says about existing outside the confines of what pop stardom is often expected to look like. “And it just is what it is. You just got to stay the course and believe at some point your breakthrough will come.” Vertigo and What a Devastating Turn of Events , along with Raye’s “Genesis,” are examples of the type of dismissals of archaic pop formula that drive the genre forward. “It’s always made sense to me that people won’t understand my music, or me making pop music,” Griff explains. “It’s allowed me to make more left-of-center pop. It’s like there’s no point in me trying to make shiny, slick pop because I think other girls are doing it better, and it’s more digestible for people.”

Later this year, both Griff and Chinouriri will open the U.S and European legs of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour, respectively. The Ghanaian American singer and songwriter Amaarae will also support for a portion of the dates. Meanwhile, Raye will join Swift at Wembley Stadium in late August, just as Griff did in June.

“I’m used to walking out onstage and knowing that there’s a cultural difference,” Griff notes. Since she first started touring in 2022, she has landed opening slots with Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay. Even when she attended the Eras Tour with a group of friends, she recalled, they were acutely aware that there weren’t many other Black girls there. “I think we’re all used to, as people of color, being perceived by white people and what that is when you walk into a room — whether it’s a small room, whether it’s a classroom, whether it’s a stadium,” Griff continues. “I just try not to overthink it.”

When they take those stages — and especially when they stand beneath the spotlights of their own — it’s with the peace of mind that they didn’t have to trade off on some sacrifice of their identity, and by extension their artistry, to be there. They’re hoping to lead by example, and keep the door open to usher in rising artists like Flowerovlove, Essence Martins, and Hannah Morgan. Chinouriri sees their vision crystal clear: “We’re going to be global superstars.”

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