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Corinne Bailey Rae

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Leeds, United Kingdom (2006 – present)

Corinne Bailey Rae (born Corinne Bailey on 26 February 1979) is an English singer and songwriter who released her eponymous debut album “Corinne Bailey Rae” in February 2006. Rae was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2006 in an annual BBC poll of music critics.

Rae was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire to a Kittitian father and an English mother, and she was the eldest of three daughters. She used to be racially abused on a regular basis while growing up, even though her verbal attackers mistakenly thought she was of Iraqi origin. She says about the situation, “My sisters and I were different and people used to say, ‘Ah, aren’t they cute, the little chocolate children’, and ‘look at their hair’”. “I know they were only being cute but it was over the top. Then people from other schools would shout, ‘Paki’ (a commonly used racist term used in the UK) to me because it was the most common racist insult of the time. At least if you’re going to do it, get it right”. “I used to shout back, ‘But my dad isn’t from Pakistan, he’s from St Kitts – so there!”

She began her musical career at school where she studied classical violin before she turned her attention to singing: “I started off singing in church, I suppose, but people think it must have been a gospel church because of the whole, you know, black assumption”, she says in reference to her multiracial background. “But it wasn’t gospel at all, it was just your regular Brethren church, very middle-class, where we would sing these harmonies every Sunday. It was always my favourite part of the service, the singing”.
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