Have you ever danced in the club with your eyes closed? Felt nostalgic for American Apparel? Ripped a blinker? RADA has a song for you. The Moscow-via-London singer’s March single “payme” kneads trance and Eurohouse into a rave-ready confection guaranteed to make anybody groove — and it’s been democratically proven. When The FADER chose a Song of the Summer this year, RADA handily walked away with the top spot over household names like TYLA, Charli xcx, and Kendrick Lamar, a testament to the song’s breezy appeal. “Payme” has been stuck in my head since I first heard it this spring, so when I heard RADA was coming stateside to perform, I had to check it out for myself.
It’s the first week of September, and the 18+ DIY show at a nondescript SoHo loft is running behind schedule. Doors were supposed to open at 10 p.m., but a late afternoon venue change means everyone is unsurprisingly late: artists, attendees, and the sound guy in charge of supplying the speakers. A small but indiscrete queue has formed on the sidewalk, and a handful of Zoomers slowly trickle in and out while audio equipment and projectors are booted and calibrated, crowding the makeshift bar for $15 Solo-cup mixed drinks.
There’s a micro-audience milling around during RADA’s brief soundcheck, but if they recognize the girl in slitted leggings and a fur-hooded black parka, they keep it to themselves. This doesn’t hold true when the pounding bass forces us to conduct our interview in the building’s lobby, in full view of concertgoers: A random girl snaps a blatant paparazzi pic which RADA’s vigilant manager promptly commands her to delete.
RADA was born in London to a Russian father and a British-Jamaican mother, but she mostly grew up in Moscow. She says she was a creative child, though she expected to go into fashion or art rather than music; after a decade of classical piano training starting at the age of five, she wanted to step away and do something different. But when RADA was 16, her family moved back to the U.K., and a “hyperfocus” on pop music — which served as her crash course in British and American culture (she learned the most from King Krule and Arctic Monkeys) — inspired her to try making her own songs. “Pop music was always a big part of my life, so it just came naturally,” she says. A couple years later, she started making demos with YouTube beats, collaborating with friends as she dabbled in R&B and hyperpop. But it wasn’t until 2022 that RADA started to take music more seriously.
“I wanted to make an alias, [but] then I messed up and performed one of the songs for the alias live,” she says, laughing. The enthusiastic reaction from the crowd prompted her to release the SHEMYYY-produced “TIGHTROPE,” crystallizing a shift in RADA’s musical stylings. “In London, everything became oversaturated [with] so many female artists doing a specific style of R&B,” she continues. “This new sound felt more authentic to me, like I was actually trying something new rather than following what everyone else was doing.”
She describes the new sound as “EDM meets R&B meets rap meets pop,” aiming to be cute and gritty at the same time by balancing pretty melodies with hard drums.
“Swag&B!” her manager helpfully chimes in as RADA nods. “I use Rihanna references a lot,” RADA says. “That’s the best way I could describe it. She delves into different genres, but she still has her own swag on it.” (Later, when I inquire about influences and dream collabs, RADA repeats Robyn Fenty’s name five times, throwing in Nicki Minaj and Snow Strippers for good measure).
RADA didn’t expect “payme” to blow up, but she can’t say it wasn’t part of the plan: “I was sad about being broke and not doing shows. So I was like okay, if I want to get booked, I should make music people want to dance to.” She hit the studio with her go-to producer Endevour (“juggin,” “LOL”), asking for a “Vogue type beat,” and he came back with the song’s central synth line. “I was kind of taking the piss, singing if you want that new shit… because I wanted to be paid,” she says of making “payme.” “I honestly hated that song when I first made it, so I didn’t expect it to do as well as it did.”
At the show, her manager wryly notes that of all her clients, RADA is by far the pickiest, never quite satisfied with a song or video treatment. That checks out: I’ve had a collection of her demos burning a hole in my phone for weeks, though it’s anyone’s guess when the general public will get to hear them. One of my favorites is a glitchy baroque collaboration with rapper-producer fakemink; another is a jerk song about falling head over heels with a particularly deft verse from Lancey Foux which RADA raps word for word during her performance.
RADA performs with Bitgurl
About that performance: When we make our way back to the main room, the spot is considerably more packed though the average age still hovers around 20 years old. The vibes are “Paris Hilton girl meets Minecraft boy,” per my colleague Sandra Song, and the crowd is already pumped up, galvanized by opener Ka$hkenni and a DJ set that swung from “OOOUUU” to “Different Day.” When RADA takes the stage — i.e. climbs atop a TV stand set in front of the CDJs — everyone is suitably ecstatic, crouching low and leaping back up on command. The energy stays up even for songs we don’t know: RADA tugs Bitgurl on stage to do the then-unreleased “picky” to dramatic screams while the aforementioned Foux feature prompts one incredulous listener to shout, “I think that’s Lancey?!”
She closes her set with “payme,” running it back twice so people can really get into it. Standing near the back of the room, stealing glimpses of RADA over a thicket of outstretched arms, it feels as though she could play it another 10 times and no one would falter, bouncing up and down to the beat without hesitation. Afterward, RADA briefly vanishes for a well-earned smoke break (she asked me for a cig hours ago to no avail). I stick around for a while, watching Xaviersobased do kickflips on the empty dancefloor, chopping it up with the event organizers and venue staff. On the way home, when I reach for my Metrocard, I find an unopened pair of earplugs. I had such a good time I forgot to protect my hearing.
