by Niko Skinner

Raury is a singer and rapper from Atlanta, Georgia. His unique style of music draws elements from hip-hop, folk rock, soul, and indie rock. It makes sense given that his musical influences are from a diverse list of artists such as Queen, Marvin Gaye, Bon Iver, Andre 3000, Kanye West, and Kid Cudi. A friend told me about Raury, and I have to say that he has been one of my favorite artists to listen to recently. I’ve had “God’s Whisper” on repeat recently, and it’s a fun song to learn how to play. Something that immediately caught my eye when I first started listening to Raury’s music and saw what he looked like is that he embodies the old adage that it’s okay to be different from everybody else. As a matter of fact, he embraces it, once even going as far as to call himself a “super wildcard” (Milton, 2015). That makes sense to me because his music doesn’t match his appearance from a societal point of view. Raury has also given back to his community through his music. He has started an annual one-day festival named Raurfest, in which he and other artists perform live in concert as part of LVRN weekend. The donations go toward art programs in Atlanta public schools as well as clothing for the homeless population (Turner, 2016). I think that is very thoughtful because we always want to use our gifts to bless others, no matter how big or small our gifts are.

However, what I want to talk about is a mixtape that Raury recently dropped in June titled Strawberry Moon. The songs on Strawberry Moon are mostly either slow or medium tempo. Also, songs such as “Feel Good”, “Heatwave” and “Channel Zero”, consist of a mix of fading background vocals and vocals in the foreground, which I feel has become a staple of Raury ever since he first came into the limelight in 2014. This mix is good because you can easily tell which is which despite the songs being unconventional. I also liked how he used multiple guitar effects in the mixtape. Examples of this are the reverb effect you hear in “2020 Vision” and what sounds like the whammy effect in “That’s Life”. As a fellow guitar player, I can certainly appreciate artists consistently innovating the use of such a popular instrument. I don’t know about you, but overall, I got some soul, lofi, and indie rock vibes from the instrumentation of Strawberry Moon. This mixtape contains messages about a variety of challenges that he has personally gone through, such as facing adversity from the world (“Heatwave”), self identity (“Phases”), the complexity of love and romance (“Her Smile”), and spirituality (“Channel Zero”). These are all very common in today’s world, and Raury does a good job of relating with us on these topics while taking us through his inner subconscious. It is hard to balance every aspect of our lives, especially when we are adults. It doesn’t get easier, so I think that it’s important to have more of these insights that can make for good conversations with the people around us.

Raury is still young, so you can certainly expect him to continue to come up with ways to be a wildcard.

References

Milton, J. (2015, November 25). Here’s What’s Up – RAURY: “I’m A Super Wildcard, You Don’t Know What I’m Gonna Make Next”. DIY Magazine. https://diymag.com/2015/11/25/heres-whats-up-raury-im-a-super-wildcard-you-dont-know-what-im-gonna-make-next

Silva, Nik. “Raury releases 22 new tracks on SoundCloud Musician broke contract with Columbia Records”. Monkeybuzz.com, 23 April 2018. https://monkeybuzz.com.br/novidades/raury-lanca-22-faixas-ineditas-no-soundcloud/

Turner, David. (2016, July 1). Raury Gives Back To Atlanta With Raurfest And ‘Trill Yoga’ – The third annual Raury-helmed festival supports ATL’s creative youth. MTV. https://www.mtv.com/news/ui0bpm/raury-gives-back-to-atlanta-with-raurfest-and-trill-yoga