Rak-Su have a catalogue of songs they’ve written and are ready to release.
Fans of the four piece – made up of childhood friends Mustafa Rahimtulla, Ashley Fongho, Jamaal Shurland and Myles Stephenson – may not have to wait too long to hear some new music from them as they’ve revealed they’ve already got loads of tracks they penned before and during the competition that are ready to drop.
Speaking on ‘Lorraine’ on Monday (04.12.17), Ashley said: "We have a got a backlog [of songs] but we always want to better ourselves so we write every single day …
"That’s the good thing about ‘X Factor’ – we have to write songs every week and you write four or five and only one will get used so we’ve got other stuff we can go back to."
The band’s mentor Simon Cowell is convinced they will become as big as One Direction – who finished third in the 2010 series of the show, have gone on to sell more than 70 million records – and, although they were the early favourites, they never expected to win the show and were just using the competition for "exposure."
Ashley explained: "I think for us, we knew who we wanted to be and we knew who we wanted to be going onto the show and obviously we saw it as a good opportunity to get some exposure for ourselves, we didn’t know it was going to go this far. I think we were just fortunate in that when we said we wanted to do our own songs, the staff were kind of like: ‘OK, if it’s really what you want to do, it’s a risk but fine.’ "
And for the first time ever, the band – who beat Grace Davies to the crown – are releasing their own original song ‘Dimelo’, which features Wyclef Jean and Naughty Boy, as the winners’ single. Proceeds from the song will go to children’s hospice charities Together for Short Lives and Shooting Star Chase.