The singer is the first UK star to top the US R&B singles charts since 1992, with Boo’d Up – a retro feelgood smash. But, she says, Britain doesn’t quite get it
Rihanna puckered up to it on Instagram.
Nicki Minaj remixed it.
Migos crooned along to it. Eighteen months after its release, south London singer
Ella Mai’s infectious single, R&B throwback Boo’d Up, has gone from being a sleeper hit to the US-conquering song of the summer – last week she became the first British artist to top the US R&B charts since Lisa Stansfield in 1992.
But when asked to pinpoint a standout moment from her song’s rise to US radio dominance, Mai’s response is decidedly level-headed. “It’s the way it’s steadily progressed,” she says, speaking from LA. She giddily reels off chart positions in the song’s ascent to its current eight-week reign in the US Top 10 as if she is still pinching herself. “For a purely R&B song with no featured artists,” she says, “that’s insane.”
With its puppy-love lyrics, Boo’d Up is a rose-tinted trip back to a time when a Friday night canoodling at the local arcade was dating goals, and the only right-swiping was at a Tesco checkout. Over a beat that sounds like a lost classic from SWV or Xscape, Mai’s swooning vocals transpose teenage heart-flutters into the chorus’s giddily onomatopoeic hook, on which she scats: “Ba-dum, boo’d up/ Biddy-da-dum, boo’d up.” Among the sharp-edged trap and hip-hop that dominates today’s playlists, Mai’s laid-back style is a welcome rush of nostalgia, like the first sip of Ribena on a summer’s day.
She says it makes her “super proud” to represent the UK, but her US dominance is yet to be replicated in her birthplace. That is partly because Mai lives in LA, where she is signed to hip-hop heavyweight DJ Mustard’s 10 Summers label. But also, “the music industry in England doesn’t really know what to do with R&B,” Mai says. “If it were up to England, Boo’d Up definitely wouldn’t be where it is now.”
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Despite Britain’s rich history of soul artists, pure R&B can often feel sidelined. A new wave of artists such as Mabel and Jorja Smith have scored their biggest hits by leaning into Afro bashment and UK garage, while the slightly more retro grooves of Etta Bond, Mahalia, and NAO don’t get the mainstream love they deserve.
Growing up in Wimbledon Chase and Mitcham in south-west London, Mai’s mum gave her a love of music, and would play Mary J Blige, Lauryn Hill, and old jazz records around the house. When she got a teaching job in New York City, her daughter, then 12, joined her and moved to the city’s Queens neighbourhood, before returning to the UK at 17 and studying at London’s BIMM music college. At 19, she auditioned for The X Factor with a couple of mates, performing a well-crafted, if unmemorable, cover of a Little Mix ballad. She first truly found her audience on Instagram, belting out soulful takes of Drake and Kanye West hits. “That was a huge part of building my fanbase,” Mai says. “I had no makeup on; my hair looked crazy. I was just being myself: the girl next door.”
Mai strengthened those connections to fans with sincere songs about self-acceptance, and biting kiss-offs (“I hope the next girl you love ends up fucking you over,” she sneered on one early track). On Boo’d Up’s parent EP, Ready, tracks are linked by straight-talking interludes aimed at a partner, like Destiny Child’s The Writing’s On the Wall for the WhatsApp generation. But for older audiences, Mai’s retro-leaning style can summon decades-old musical memories. “I can press play on Boo’d Up and reminisce,” says Marsha Ambrosius, a solo R&B artist formerly of millennium-era duo Floetry. “I can put my hair in a pineapple up-do, gel down fingerwaves at the side, and feel like it’s 1996. Among all the current madness, you just wanna listen to something that makes you feel good again.”
That feeling may be too irresistible for the UK to pass up. On this week’s midweek singles chart, Boo’d Up jumped from 78 to 56, and it was added to Radio 1’s C-list last week, meaning it will be played around eight times a week. “People request it all he time,” says DJ Ace, who runs an R&B show on BBC 1Xtra. “I was recently in Ibiza, and that was the number one record that women wanted to hear in the club.”
As her next single Trip is released this week, Mai wants Boo’d Up to be a success in the UK: for herself, sure, but also to prove R&B’s deserved place at the heart of UK music. “There’s a place for R&B in the UK industry, a huge market,” she says. “I hope that Boo’d Up can be a testament to the fact. Sometimes, it takes you moving outside the box to prove that it can be done.”