Articulating personal truth with vulnerability and bravery
Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez is a singer/composer based in Brooklyn, New York. Born into a family of musicians, music was Raina’s first language and it runs deep within her veins. Rooted in jazz and R&B, the songwriter invites us into her unique sonic world with harmonic nuance and lyrical poetry.
Raina’s cross-genre style is built from the bottom up. With improvisation as a starting point for her songs, Raina draws on her emotionality and leans into her perception of the world around her, uncovering hidden depths within daily life and articulating personal truth with vulnerability and bravery. Songwriting is her way of processing and understanding life in all its complexity.
“Better For You” grapples with the gaze, focusing on the experience of being objectified and the ambiguous response to this reality. The song is most explicitly about sex and the ways in which heterosexual dynamics often prioritize men’s pleasure. “Better For You” highlights the ways in which women contort themselves physically and emotionally to be more desirable. Raina shares, “It also depicts the flip side of this, where we become or can become hooked on being the desired one; the way we come to need it, the way our identity becomes tied to this positioning. This is the ambiguity, the grey.” Drawing on her Latinx heritage, the rhythmic piano phrases, dynamic instrumentation and a grooving rhythm section provide a hypnotic backdrop for Raina’s clear and concise vocals.
Speaking on the remix, Matt FX shares, “When I first heard Raina’s track ‘Better For You’ I immediately fell in love with her gorgeous vocals and the jazzy vibe of the instrumental production. With this remix, I realized less is more – I just wanted to tease out some of the dancier frequencies of the track while definitely keeping everything that I love about the original. Some of my favourite rooms to DJ are the ones with classy, intimate dancefloors, and this remix personifies that slinky vibe.”
Raina adds, “I was excited to hear that Matt FX wanted to do a remix of ‘Better For You’! This song always toed the line of a dance track. Even in our original production of it we asked ourselves how much we should lean into the dance rhythms. Matt FX did a great job with the remix, really letting the song shine and giving us that driving bass to get us moving. It’s so great to hear the song lean into this direction, hopefully bringing some heat to the winter dance floor.”
With over 600k streams on Spotify and a budding global audience, RSG has packed rooms at prestigious venues such as Brooklyn Bowl, SOB’s, Mercury Lounge, and many others. With her first Europe tour set for February 2022, this soulful singer has great things on the horizon.
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