Best of What's Next 2009: Rye Rye [Musician]

Photo by Aaron Fallon

Hometown: Baltimore
Album: Title TBD
For Fans Of: M.I.A., Missy Elliott, Diplo

High school can be so lame. All those tests. Homework. Plus the other kids teasing you about your red-hot music career. “It was kinda annoying,” says 18-year-old Baltimore club queen Rye Rye, “’cause I would be walking the hall and there would be a group of people in a stairwell, and they would all break out singing my song.”

Whatever. Rye Rye is done with high school. She graduated last year, and will soon drop her full-length debut. The record, a mix of reggae and club music, features collaborations with Diplo, Blaqstarr, Sinden and M.I.A., who signed the pint-sized, scratchy-voiced kid as the first artist on her N.E.E.T. label. The two first met a few years ago, after Rye Rye got a phone call requesting her presence at a local studio. When she showed up, a South Asian woman with a British accent started talking to her. “She was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been looking for you for the longest time,’” Rye Rye remembers. “I was just looking at her crazy, like, ‘Who is this lady?’ ’Cause she had an accent and everything, and I was like, ‘How was she looking for me?’”

M.I.A. asked Rye Rye to come out on tour, and she co-produced and sang on her protégé’s record. “When we recorded, she was really focused,” Rye Rye says. “She was more focused on adding different elements to the beat. I was more focused on watching TV.”

What’s Next? “I could see myself involved in other stuff ... like maybe playing a voice of a cartoon character, or maybe doing something involving dancing—even choreography for other people,” Rye Rye says. “I dunno, anything productive. But for myself, like album-wise, I’m just looking to promote it any way I can.”

Listen to Rye Rye's "Bang (ft. M.I.A.)":