Loading details…
Artist
TARA LILY
12+ albums
rnbjazzsoulpopbritish
about
The first British signing to Motown Records UK, Peckham-raised Tara Lily has earned her place at the table with an ambitious fusion of jazz and R&B. “It’s a hard thing to watch happen to your own area when you’re not someone who has benefited,” she says. Lily has lived in Peckham her entire life, having walked only ten minutes from the council flat she was born and raised in. Her Scottish mother and Bangladeshi father ran away together from the impossibility of their opposing worlds and built themselves a life where diversity was the very fabric of its community. “Financially, I’m one of the people that has still not benefited. It’s been a strange, sad thing to see. I mean, I’ve seen good things come from it – obviously, there is more of an arts community culture here now, but I think that’s going to go,” she says matter-of-factly, “because a lot of those people probably won’t be able to afford to stay for much longer.” The first thing you should know about Lily is she isn’t in the business of serving truths with a spoonful of sugar: realities are a bitter pill to swallow, and facts are cold. It’s easy to forget she is 22 years old when her air of world-weary confidence, of knowing too much too soon, belies her age. Her agemates in her position, as an artist signed to a label on the cusp of making their first, definitive statement, are often bewildered by their newfound success that feels like a result of chance rather than calculation. But not Tara Lily. When I ask her if
