Rachel Chinouriri: from panic attacks to pop's most sought-after support act

Rachel Chinouriri has had a week to remember. The 27-year-old performed in front of 45,000 people at Wolf Alice's Finsbury Park homecoming show on Sunday, then picked up the best new music prize at the O2 Silver Clef awards — her first ever trophy after earlier nominations. The honour came from her former Brit school headteacher, and Melanie C was among those who noticed her backstage.

It is a long way from October 2017, when Chinouriri suffered her first panic attack before what should have been a milestone gig supporting Celeste at London's Laylow club. Her manager advised her to go home, but she decided to perform anyway, 'half crying'. That experience, she says, taught her that the worst-case scenarios in her head rarely happen.

Chinouriri grew up in Croydon as the only one of five siblings born in the UK; her family moved from Zimbabwe. Her parents had been child soldiers during Zimbabwe's independence war, and her mother ran a strict Christian household while caring for a sick father. Money was tight, but the family invented games to cope. At a mostly white secondary school, she endured vicious racist bullying — being spat on, called the N-word, and tormented with monkey noises. One pupil was suspended and another excluded. Eventually she enrolled herself in a more diverse school, pretending to be her mother on the application form.

At the Brit school, she found a place where difference was embraced. She was in the same year as Olivia Dean and Cat Burns; Lola Young was a few years below. At home, she was forbidden from listening to non-Christian music, but when she controlled the TV she would put on Oasis and Coldplay.

Her 2024 debut album, 'What a Devastating Turn of Events', laid bare painful experiences: a cousin's suicide after an unwanted pregnancy, body dysmorphia, and self-harm. It earned her hundreds of millions of streams and a reputation for fearless honesty. In 2022, she publicly challenged the music industry for miscategorising her as R&B or soul, saying: 'You see my colour before you hear my music.'

Her second album, 'I Think I Spoke Too Soon', marks a shift towards bright synth-pop, inspired by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Donna Summer, Prince and LCD Soundsystem. Lead single 'One Song Away from Crying' points toward a more danceable direction. She has also decided to go sober and reflects on her party-girl past in songs like 'Broken Chair' and 'The Good Fight'. Her audience, she learned, skews overwhelmingly queer — news she celebrated with her fan group chat.

Chinouriri will soon play at Rodrigo's Daisy Chain Fields festival in California and support Abrams on a US tour. Once plagued by stage fright, she now seems at ease with who she is. 'I thought I knew myself,' she says. 'Now I look in the mirror and think: is this actually who I am?'