Listen: Raury's All Of The Things

Last week, while my husband was out of town for work, I FINALLY got to watch what I wanted to on TV, which meant catch-up time on DVR, which meant alternating between Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I started with the Donald Trump episode of Colbert's show first, because Donald Trump is a train wreck of an entertainer, and I must not miss a random thing that comes out of his mouth. I'm fascinated that he is a major player in the current political arena of the United States and shuddered a bit when Colbert japed that he would fondly look back on the evening as that time he got to interview the last POTUS. It's kinda funny right now, a year out from actual elections, but it's scary to think how quickly him being elected into office would send our nation tailspinning into political chaos. I digress.

Raury was the musical guest on that show and my first introduction was him belting, "You better run from the devil!" At first, I was sure I was watching a skinny black kid sing epic country music, but the longer I watched, I was sure I was watching the debut (network debut at least) of a strange, beautiful new talent. His music in Devil's Whisper alone is indie rock, country, tribal, hip-hop...so many things, all culminating in a lyrically and musically powerful song and a visually mesmerizing performance.

About thirty seconds into his performance, I texted my BFF, Browngirlspeaks, who, unsurprisingly, had already heard of Raury-she's super Earth Mother hip. After I finished watching his performance, I googled him and found youtube videos of his Colbert performance (below) as well as the official music video for Devil's Whisper and texted the links to her. Then I called her to make sure she knew-knew about him, because if she wasn't into him yet, I needed her to be into him after that night because I need another fangirl to fangirl with. We watched a bit of the videos and gushed over his awesome otherness and, if I may speak for the brown girl who speaks, solidified our instant fandom of Raury. Success. After that, I went to iTunes and bought his Indigo Child EP, the All We Need EP, and The Hunger Games Mockingly Part 1 Soundtrack (because he has a song on there and I wasn't sure why I didn't already have that soundtrack anyway).

Devil's Whisper on Colbert

I tried to pick an interview session to share with y'all along with his music videos, but oh my GAH, RAURY so adorable and interesting, so I'm just going to share his whole Interview Sessions playlist starting with my favorite one, produced by the BBC, which is the best introduction to Raury, The Artist. If you only watch one other interview, let it be the one with Sway in the Morning. And if you only watch one after that, let it be the Music Feed interview, where he talks more about his early music influences including MJ at the age of 3 and getting his first guitar at age 11. Then watch the one with Ebro. He's just 19!