The Art Of Becoming Ebony Riley
Our Siren Issue cover star conquered fashion, and is now turning inward on her debut album 'Beautiful Tragedy.'
There’s a moment, right before we really get into it, where Ebony Riley pauses and laughs at herself. “Now why I gotta do that?” she says, shaking her head after flubbing her intro. “I play all day.”
It’s playful. Disarming. Real. That’s the thing about Ebony — the mystique might pull you in, but the humanity is what keeps you there.
By now, many people know her face. Before she was building a name in R&B, she was building a résumé in fashion. Born and raised in Detroit, Riley left home with nothing but ambition and the kind of fearlessness you only have before the world tells you who you’re supposed to be.
“I had no fear then,” she tells me. “I just went.” She auditioned for America’s Next Top Model. Didn’t make it. Got survival jobs to make ends meet. Kept pushing. Two years later, she was signed. Eventually (under the name Riley Montana), she became one of the most visible Black models of the past decade — walking runways for major houses, appearing in high-fashion campaigns, gracing the pages of Vogue and beyond.
From the outside, it looked like a dream. But inside? Something wasn’t fully clicking.
“I was in rooms I never expected. Traveling the world for the first time. Helping my family. But I still wasn’t fulfilled.”
That word — fulfilled — lingered in the air between us. Because modeling wasn’t the origin story; music was. After years of being seen, Ebony Riley is finally ready to be heard.
A Girl From Detroit
Detroit isn’t just where Ebony is from. It’s how she moves. It’s the reason she laughs loudly. The reason she’ll check herself mid-sentence. The reason she’ll hype herself up with a “bitch, yeah, you did that” without apology.
Detroit is gospel harmonies in small churches. It’s Motown. It’s Mary J. Blige playing from a stereo while your mama cleans the house. It’s survival instincts paired with softness you protect at all costs.
Ebony has been singing since she was seven. Her mother kept the house filled with music: Mary J. Blige, Brandy, Aaliyah, Toni Braxton, Erykah Badu. Gospel on Sundays. R&B throughout the week.
“My favorite ’90s album? Mary J. Blige My Life,” she says without hesitation. “I didn’t even know what she was talking about. But my little ass was singing down because I felt her.”
That’s the kind of artist Ebony wants to be. Not someone you just hear; someone you feel. But growing up in Detroit, dreaming and doing are two different things. She loved music, but she didn’t believe she could be the one in the forefront.
“I never had the confidence to do it,” she admits. “I didn’t think I could be that girl.” So modeling became the stepping stone. And in hindsight, she sees the divine order in it.
“I feel like that was why God made me do the modeling,” she says. “So I could get over that part where it’s like, ‘girl, if you don’t do it, now, when will you?” The runway taught her presence. The camera taught her control. But music? Music taught her truth.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
A few years ago, something shifted. Ebony had built a solid modeling career. She had visibility. Stability. Access. But she kept feeling that quiet nudge.
“This ain’t what you here for,” she remembers thinking. “This was a stepping stone to get you in the door. But it’s not your full calling.” That realization isn’t glamorous. It’s terrifying.
To pivot from a successful modeling career — where you’re already validated — into music, where you’re starting over? That’s ego death. That’s risk and faith. She started slowly. Writing. Recording. Pulling back. Coming back again.
In 2023, she released her debut EP, ebony — seven tracks that felt like an introduction and a confession all at once. It wasn’t flashy. It was intimate. Intentional. I remember hearing the song “Deuce Deuce” from that EP and immediately having that thought of “wait, who is this?!” It quietly positioned her as an R&B artist to watch.
But Beautiful Tragedy — her upcoming debut album via Interscope Records that is due out soon — is different.
A Beautiful Tragedy
When Ebony talks about the album title, her voice shifts. Softer. Slower. “It started off beautiful,” she says of the relationship that inspired it. “Then it got real bad.” You can hear the lived-in nature of that sentence. Not dramatized. Just honest.
But instead of letting the narrative center on the ex, she flipped it.
“I kind of took my power back. Instead of making my situation about him, I started looking at myself. Like, you are a beautiful tragedy yourself.”
That’s the thesis. Not victimhood. Maybe some revenge, but mainly reflection. She knows people see her beauty first. The model. The face. The silhouette.
“But they don’t really know where I come from,” she says. “My story. My upbringing. The trauma. The shit that I went through.”
Detroit is in her. A city known for its soul and its resilience. The toughness people assume. But there’s also tenderness. “People think I’m just this tough Detroit girl,” she laughs. “Like I’ll cut a bitch. And I’m like, no. I’m really emotional.”
That duality shapes the album, as she tells me about her favorite records. “Sick Of Me” is hard-hitting and empowering — checking herself, holding herself accountable. “Honest” is experimental and vulnerable — soft, open, and taking cues from early 2000s R&B stars like Aaliyah and Brandy.
And then there’s lead single “Only You”, which currently sits in the Top 20 on Urban/R&B Radio. It’s a sensual and celebratory manifestation of love that knocks.
“I don’t have a man right now,” she says with a grin. “But I’m trying to re-manifest that type of love.” “Only You” has an aura to it that’s been missing from popular R&B in recent years. We’ve been in a heartbroken headspace, a “revenge on the man that cheated on me” headspace. And so to hear the opening line of Girl, celebrate a motherfucka if he doing right” in Ebony’s gorgeous lower register made me sit up straight upon hearing it for the first time.
“That might be my number one on the album. It makes me step into my femininity.” That word femininity feels important. Because for Ebony, femininity isn’t fragility. It’s a choice. It’s softness without surrender.
The Producers, The Process, The Growth
Ebony lights up when we talk about the process of creating the Beautiful Tragedy album.
Working with heavyweight producers like Rodney Jerkins (Brandy’s “Full Moon”, Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath”) and Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande’s "thank u next” & “Positions”) pushed her technically. But it’s her description of working with one of my all-time favorites, James Fauntleroy, that reveals how deeply she pays attention.
“His brain is alien,” she says. “He starts at the end of the song and goes backwards. I never seen anybody create like that.” She watches. Learns. Absorbs. There’s humility there. And hunger. And she knows her new music is hot, and it’s strong.
“I tell myself every day, ‘Bitch, yeah, you did that. You about to eat this shit up.’”
It sounds playful, but it’s also survival. When you pivot careers. When you risk comfort. When you tell the world this is the real you, you have to be your own hype woman before expecting anyone else to do it for you.
Siren Energy
For this issue, we’re calling it The Siren Issue. Not siren as seduction, necessarily. Siren as pull; as mystery and intrigue. Ebony Riley doesn’t scream for attention. She doesn’t overshare for virality. She doesn’t force the moment.
She lingers, drawing you in over time. Fashion loves control. Fashion loves stillness. Fashion loves mystery. But R&B? R&B loves confession. And confession requires you to risk being misunderstood.
Her influences make sense when she runs through them rapid-fire: Brandy. Aaliyah. Toni Braxton. Lauryn Hill. Usher’s Confessions. Ebony loves storytellers— people who paint emotional landscapes.
“I love stories,” she says about Confessions. “I wanted to be mad at him, but I was like, damn. This is good.” That’s what she’s building. Not just songs. Stories.
Feeling Seen
When I ask what she wants people to walk away with after listening to the album, she doesn’t hesitate. “I want people to feel seen.”
Not impressed. Not intimidated. Seen.
“I’m touching such a wide range of emotions on my album. It’s not linear. I’m not just angry. I’m not just happy. I’m not just outside where the niggas at. It’s a balance.”
That balance — between healing and hurt, confidence and doubt, beauty and tragedy — is what makes the project resonate. She’s not presenting a perfect arc. She’s documenting her journey in real time. And maybe that’s what makes her dangerous in the best way. Because authenticity, when it’s real, always gets through.
A Beautiful Becoming
At the end of our shoot, Ebony smiles wide and says, “We about to take over with this one.” There’s Detroit in that sentence. There’s hunger. There’s joy. But there’s also peace.
She left home with no fear. She conquered fashion. She listened to the quiet voice that said, this isn’t the full story. She started again. She’s still building.
Ebony Riley is not just a model-turned-singer. She is not just a beautiful face with a tragic love story. She is not just an emerging R&B voice. She is a woman in the middle of becoming — publicly, honestly, unapologetically.
And that? That’s the most powerful sound of all.
Credits:
Writer: Dante Nicholas
Creative Director & Producer: Dante Nicholas
Photographer: Tony Bowen
Stylist: Sierra Simone
Makeup Artist: Austin Sather
Hair Stylist: Ar’tavia Harris
Videographer: Shaun Llewellyn