Raury on the art of audacious street hustling

It’s early morning on a sunny Tuesday in October. Raury is in London on his first international tour and we’re chatting over Skype while he eats a breakfast of sugar-dusted donuts. He’s wearing his signature straw hat and the kind of massive smile that makes conversation comfortable from the get-go.

At 18 years of age, Raury has already set himself a grand mission. “My aim is to do music that does to others what music did for me – it changed my life,” he says, in a deep Southern drawl. It’s a bold objective – and it doesn’t end there. “I won’t compromise, I won’t live a life on my knees,” come the introductory words to ‘God’s Whisper’, the single that swept the blogosphere this summer. “I am the saviour,” he announces, turning the song into a hymnody with a tribalesque choir of the repetitive “ooh-na-na”.

Raury, who hails from Atlanta, is experiencing the afterglow of putting out a self-released debut that instantly garnered buzz. Indigo Child – an eclectic LP that fuses indie folk with soul, hip hop and tinges of gospel – is emblematic of a new generation of genre-defying artists who are adding credibility to the pop spectrum. But as Raury knows, a versatile sound isn’t enough to get you noticed. With more than 20,000 songs added to Spotify each day, putting out a self-released album takes a certain amount of confidence.

Of course, it helps if you are backed by the heft of a canny management team. Though he has since signed to Columbia Records, Raury was initially backed by Love Renaissance, a group of friends who helped turn the self-release process into a collective effort. Far from making their achievements any less impressive, artists who ‘self release’ with the backing of a team are simply part of the changing face of the mainstream industry; the bigger labels – keen to adapt to the spirit of DIY culture – gently easing young talent, like indie darling Lorde, into the public consciousness at a grassroots level.

As the internet becomes the go-to place for mediated musical discoveries – with new talent pushed our way via algorithms that chart our taste and purchasing patterns – Raury and his management are replicating that stumble-upon process. Raury’s self-promotion tactics were simple. He began his campaign offline, shunning social media and getting out into the real world to drum up noise.

“I make myself heard with the anti-tour,” he says, dropping the terminology as if it’s common knowledge. “My management and I came up with it at one of our creative meetings. We wanted to reach out to the right people who have an ear for my music.”

Raury’s ‘anti-tour’ consists of him pulling up at other artists’ concerts in a massive van – complete with generator, megaphone and stage-like trailer – and playing an ad-hoc gig outside their show. His sole objective: stealing other people’s fans like a sonic magpie. It’s a guerrilla tactic that feeds into a culture of music that’s already self-referential; Raury rolls up at the show of an artist he admires – and walks away with admirers of his own.