There’s a saying that goes that we all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé. “I actually don’t,” says Ray BLK, rejecting the productivity-shaming axiom. In fact, she’s desperate for a day off. I can sense some melancholy in her voice as she explains that work commitments have delayed a planned holiday to Madeira. “I feel an immense amount of guilt when I decide to not reply to messages,” says the 27-year-old singer-songwriter. “You just feel like, if you want to be great, if you want to be the best at what you do, you should not take time for yourself. You have to value every single opportunity that comes your way, especially if you’re a black person.”

A few minutes into our call, I sense that getting straight to the heart of things is one of BLK’s many talents. Born Rita Ekwere in Nigeria in 1994, she moved to London aged four and was raised in Catford, south-east London. She has always been vocal about the realities of being a young musician, from the lack of dark-skinned women in the industry to her belief that it is sizeist, ageist, racist and homophobic. “I feel like my toughness comes from being a girl from the ends, from south-east London. It definitely made me grow a tough shell. We just have this culture of, like, chat shit, get banged.”

Listening to her debut album, Access Denied, a glossy collection of sexy R&B tracks, it’s hard to imagine it came from a girl who had scuffles in secondary school. The record is rich with sybaritic, slow-tempo beats and lustful lyrics – a world away from a hot-tempered teenager. “I used to get suspended at least once a year for fighting,” she laughs, recalling how much she’s matured. Now, she channels much of that fire into music and gains respect through skill and hard work. It’s why she’s managed to work with some of music’s biggest stars – Stormzy featured on a remix of her 2016 ode to Catford, My Hood, and she opened for Nicki Minaj in 2019. Not to mention some of UK rap’s leading names, from Stefflon Don to Kojey Radical to Giggs, appearing on Access Denied. “I got that Giggs feature because we built a relationship. I put the work in. Things don’t just land in your lap,” she says.

BLK grew up listening to Mary J Blige, Whitney Houston and gospel music and watching music channels such as Channel U and MTV Base. “A lot of the R&B that we consume is from America. I didn’t want to shy away from the fact that I’m influenced by those sounds and those people.” She began making music aged 13, forming a band with childhood friend MNEK called New Found Content. Fast forward to 2015, when she released her debut EP, Havisham, inspired by Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, while studying for a degree in English literature at Brunel University. “When I wrote Havisham, I didn’t know anything about the music industry. I just found some beats on YouTube. I’d be having a bad day and I’d write about how I’m feeling, with tears in my eyes. It was like writing in my diary, but making it into a song. It was cathartic for me.”

She topped the BBC Music Sound of 2017 list and was nominated for best newcomer at the 2016 Mobos. She’s released a string of well-received singles, including 2018’s Run Run, which looks at the emotional side of youth crime – it has had more than 4m views on YouTube. “I had this concept of showing how trapped that world can be. In the video, [a young man] is trying to run, but every step of the way, there’s another situation that he has to defend himself against.” The song grew out of her frustration with the rhetoric around knife crime and drill music.

“What breaks my heart is seeing people who are lucky enough to live in a middle-class bubble, target, penalise and critique people who are actually victims of their environment,” she says. “When you’re from the place I’m from, you don’t have many options. A life of violence or crime is what is most available to you to support your family and because the government doesn’t support them enough, they need to find a way to provide income. If you live in a surrounding that is dangerous, where you have watched friends die because of senseless acts of violence, why would you not feel like you then have to carry a knife to protect yourself? I just feel that it’s not logical to believe that anybody would want to live a life on edge.”

Her single Dark Skinned, which appears on Access Denied, celebrates dark skin in a world that has historically favoured people of lighter skin tones. “It came from a place of positivity,” she asserts. “I wanted to make a song about being dark and remind people that it’s beautiful first and foremost, and that you’re capable of doing everything. Don’t allow people to limit you because of the colour of your skin and don’t limit yourself.”

Her mother, who is mentioned in the song, had a big role to play in BLK’s self-confidence. She considers her mother her “safe space” because she’s someone she can share all of her fears and hopes with – and she makes the best okra soup. “Maybe I was naive, but I didn’t feel like doors would be closed to me because I was dark skinned. I was raised in a household where I was told that, if I wanted, I could be prime minister,” she says.

She is protective of her family, which she demonstrated when she auditioned for The X Factor aged 16. “I was shocked by my experience,” she recalls. “After the audition, producers call to find out more about you. They were asking about my home life. I mentioned my mum over and over, so they asked: ‘Is your dad not in your life?’. I said no and they asked: ‘Are you hoping he sees you on TV and comes back in your life?’ They were trying to create a story.”

Then, she tells me, the producers tried to get BLK to bring her disabled brother to an audition, after she revealed to them she was a registered young carer. “He is autistic. He can’t speak and he can’t hear,” she says. BLK remembers producers being keen to get the two of them interacting on camera and for her to talk about how much it meant to him. “It doesn’t mean anything to him. He does not have the cognitive function to feel any way about me potentially being on X Factor!” The “sob stories” the TV show had become infamous for – BLK faults producers for them, not the contestants. “I realise these people are being pressured by producers because it makes great TV”

Without the help of the now defunct TV show, BLK has managed to rise to the top of her game. She is one of few black UK R&B singers with support from a label, and her position is all thanks to her integrity and transparency. She’s already started working on a second album which bares her soul and talks about her mental health struggles. “It’s about a lot of stuff I’ve been through in the pandemic. I’m really excited about making something that is really healing me right now and will hopefully heal other people.”

She also plans to get into acting. “I was blessed enough to make the lead track for Rocks,” she says, referring to Sarah Gavron’s award-winning coming-of-age film released last year. “When I saw the whole thing, I wept. The lead actress, Bukky Bakray – I’m so happy for her. That’d be a dream to me, to tell a really powerful story.”

Major success feels close for BLK and Access Denied puts her on the right track. Still, as sugary as her vocal tone is, and as confident as the lyrics are on the album, I think her fortune comes in large part from her urge to prove people wrong. “If I get kicked down, I’m going to get back up,” she says. “I always thought to myself: I’m going to show Simon [Cowell] and dem man, you didn’t want me, but I made it. And I bloody well did, didn’t I?”