Mixing rap, R&B and laid-back pop, Dallas’ RAVS is a 26-year-old wunderkind ready to take the musical world by storm. Influenced by everyone from the Beatles, Norah Jones, Kanye West and A Tribe Called Quest, RAVS once believed combining these styles would be impossible. But her gift for songwriting has done exactly that.
With an attitude that matches her cool, incessant beats, the young lady is as confident as she is talented. “I realized there’s no limit to my creativity,” she says, “nor is there a limit on what I can do.”
Even her stage name shows chutzpah. As a young girl, she was teased because of her Italian heritage and called “ravioli.” Like most things in her young life, RAVS turned an insult into a career that’s just getting started. “I went all in on it,” she says. “I even had tiny raviolis on the back of my business cards.”
She’s always struggled with self-esteem, she says, and finding the time necessary to be successful in the music industry. But she’s proud of the direction she’s heading and hopes to cultivate a community where she and other women can commune. “I love this community,” she explains, “but I want women to have more spaces, to have more women to go to. I’m lucky to be where I’m at. Sometimes I still think, ‘How did I get here?’”
Songs like “Picturesque,” “Like This” and “Beauty” demonstrate the reality of this woman’s swagger. After releasing an EP, Tangled, in 2019 and a new single, “Isolated,” this month (March 2021), RAVS is ready to record a full-length and hit the road.
Photo by Maia Tharp
