How Rachel Chinouriri Is Using Her Debut Album to Make Sense of 'Trauma': 'I Find Music Quite Healing' (Exclusive)

The British singer-songwriter will release her nostalgia-tinged debut 'What a Devastating Turn of Events' on Friday

The last time Rachel Chinouriri was in Los Angeles, things did not go her way.

In fact, the singer-songwriter, 25, had “a bit of a menty b,” she explains over a recent lunch, using Britspeak for “mental breakdown.” The bummer of a trip out West even inspired a song called “The Hills,” a hard-rocking anthem about being somewhere you feel like you don’t belong.

Now, though, on a breezy day in March, she’s returned to the scene of the crime, and is facing her fears (read: noshing on pepperoni pizza amid the glitzy glamor of the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Cabana Café).

“I’ve only been here one day and it already is treating me better,” she says. “I was like, ‘I need to come back with a way better mindset.’ I’ve already gone to the gym, going for a swim later. I’m feeling more calm.”

It’s a mindset that will serve Chinouriri well as she enters what’s sure to be a dizzyingly busy phase of her career: on Friday, May 3, she’ll release her debut album What a Devastating Turn of Events, an unflinchingly honest deep dive into the depths of her soul that runs the gamut from quietly gut-wrenching to cheekily bold, with a hefty dose of early 2000s nostalgia thrown in for good measure.

“Music writing is really therapeutic for me,” she says. “Once I get it out, I feel a massive weight released off my shoulders. I find music quite healing.”

Chinouriri explains that the album, which is heavily influenced by the early 2000s music she grew up listening to, is arranged in a way that begins with concepts a bit more lighthearted (like the Lily Allen-esque “Dumb Bitch Juice,” in which she’s frustrated with herself for letting a “cute” man walk all over her), only to veer into darker territory like "I Hate Myself," on which she sings of body dysmorphia, and the title track, which tells the story of a family member in Zimbabwe who died by suicide upon learning she was pregnant and unable to get an abortion.

“I mean, it is called What a Devastating Turn of Events, so I did want it to really turn. I just like the contrast of being able to have both, because I think sadness comes in many forms,” she says. “I think trauma is one thing that should be really openly spoken about, because even with [the title track], people sometimes are so scared to even approach the topic. But I’m like, ‘No, I wrote it for a reason — that we can talk about it and acknowledge why something has happened and how we can change something and have really open conversations about it. Conversation is the only progress you can get in moving something along.”

Trauma and all that comes with it is a topic Chinouriri knows well. Raised in the town of Croydon outside of London, she was the first member of her family to be born in England. Her parents, from Zimbabwe, were formerly child soldiers in the Rhodesian Bush War, and though they spoke English, better understood their native language.

The family dynamics were complicated for Chinouriri. She felt British and loved her home country, but was relentlessly bullied at school for being Black in a sea of white classmates. Eventually, she forged her mother’s signature in order to switch schools, and by 16, she’d been accepted into the prestigious Brit School, a performing and creative arts school known for helping launch the early careers of alumni like Adele and Amy Winehouse.

The creative freedom the school allowed opened Chinouriri up to a whole new world of possibilities. She released her first song, “Weight of the World,” at 16 on SoundCloud, and her first EP followed in 2019. In 2022, she found viral fame on TikTok with her delicately romantic song “So My Darling.”

“People used to call me the wonky and weird one, and then everyone was really wonky and weird and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is great,’” she recalls. “Brit School was almost like, ‘OK, this is really home to me.’ It changed my life, to be honest. I’d never met people who were so musically inclined, people who wanted to make weird noises and be like, ‘Oh, this is art.’ I loved it.”

Chinouriri had found a place that encouraged her dreams of becoming an indie pop star — but her rise to fame wasn’t without hurdles. Though she was releasing indie pop music, Chinouriri’s songs often wound up on R&B playlists on streaming platforms, as curators assumed she made R&B music because she was Black.

In January 2022, she spoke out in a viral Instagram post, in which she said she regretted attaching photos of herself to her album art, as it led to her being lumped in with urban, R&B and neo soul artists. “If you didn’t know what unconscious bias was before, this is an example,” she wrote. “Black artists exist in every genre, just let us in.”

Looking back on the post now, Chinouriri says the reaction to it “actually changed my life, to be honest.”

“It was near a time where I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue working with my label. It was the pandemic, and nothing was coming out, and it was just a whole lot of chaos. I’d left a five-year relationship. And I just kept getting put into these R&B playlists and being asked, ‘Hey, can you say thanks for the playlisting?’ And I was like, it’s not OK!” she says.

The singer says her breaking point came when she was in the studio with indie musician Etta Marcus, and someone in charge of playlisting on an unnamed platform came into the studio and said he was a fan of Chinouriri’s music. He brought with him a popular rapper, and introduced Chinouriri to the rapper as “the next R&B soul princess.” The moment was a “trigger point” for the singer, who says it made her realize she had to speak out.

“That was the same night I made the post and it went really viral. It was quite mental. It really opened a lot of doors for me, so I’m quite happy that I said something,” she says, noting that as soon as she spoke out, her music was taken off R&B playlists and put where it belonged.

“With that, I hit 1 million monthly listeners simply because my music was put in the right playlist,” she says. “If you’re looking for R&B music and then you hear ‘So My Darling,’ you’re going to skip it. It just wasn’t reaching anyone. And with that small change, I reached so many people. Having to go through the awkward conversations of, ‘You’re mis-genreing me because I’m Black’... That’s a really awkward conversation to have with someone who is trying to help you. ‘Cause some people’s reactions are, are you calling me racist? It’s such a touchy subject to try and go around. But it just makes me feel happy that I managed to get my chance to be seen.”

And she’s certainly been seen. In recent years she’s opened for stars like Sam Fender, Louis Tomlinson and Lewis Capaldi, whom she wooed by drunkenly DMing for a spot on his tour.

Then there’s celebrity fans like Adele and Florence Pugh, who stars in her “Never Need Me” music video. The actress first came to one of Chinouriri’s shows several years ago, and the two have since struck up a friendship (“She is so lovely — she’s so funny”).

“I had no clue who she was because I don't watch films,” Chinouriri says. “And then I think a year later I saw Midsommar and I was like, ‘Oh this girl is acting for her life. Who is this?’ And at the end they said Florence Pugh. And I was like, ‘Oh. Oh, oh f---.’ She is actually massively talented.”

As she readies for the release of What a Devastating Turn of Events, Chinouriri (who says she’s in a “happy relationship” with someone “outrageously sweet”) is already looking to the future, and says she feels as though the record contains enough elements that allow avenues for growth in the future.

“There’s so much pressure around the first album. People are like, ‘This is your make or break,’” she says. “But my manager’s been really great at guiding me and being like, ‘This isn’t the only thing that’s going to happen.’ This is actually the baby steps of anything. I’m like, as long as I show the foundations of who I am, I think I can branch into anything. It’s being able to give all of who I am in a first album and then knowing that I can go anywhere. Beyoncé’s got a f---ing country album. That’s the kind of career that you want. I hope people will be like, ‘OK, I understand where she’s from, her upbringing, her vibe,’ and hopefully they can join the bandwagon and support me more in the future.”

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