Pop star K'Lee leads double life

By ELEANOR BLACK

There two girls called K'Lee. One works at Jay Jays in Henderson, turns coy when talking about her new boyfriend and has just gone flatting. She wears her hair pulled back in a ponytail and schlumps around in jeans and a big cardie. She looks tired and no more glamorous than your average school leaver.

The other is New Zealand's answer to J Lo, an emerging R&B star with a slick debut album and obsessive young fans who drive for hours just to get her signature. She wears gold trainers, her hair is loose around her shoulders, and someone else does her makeup.

"I feel like a schizo, I really do," says the 18-year-old singer, who in the past year has been signed to a record company, released four singles and been nominated for Top New Act at the 2002 New Zealand Music Awards.

"I'll be out playing pool with friends and someone will come up, wanting my signature. And I think, 'Am I K'Lee the friend right now, or K'Lee the singer?"'

K'Lee the pragmatist is curled up on a green sofa the shade of Kermit the Frog, her hands wrapped around a takeout flat white. She is a little jumpy after her drive to the Universal Music offices in central Auckland - she was nearly rear-ended while looking for a park.

Polite, smart and realistic about her career, K'Lee is surprisingly businesslike. She is also sweet-natured and half the staff at Universal seem to have fallen in love with her. They are busily trying to dispel the impression that K'Lee is "manufactured", which could be the kiss of death for the ambitious singer. A publicist rings TimeOut to ask our intentions in profiling her.

He need not have worried, because the teenager sitting on the couch is well aware that she is a product, one she hopes to mould to her satisfaction in the years to come.

As she awaits public reaction to her self-titled debut album, she is hoping she will be a big seller.

"I'm pretty nervous because the album is going to show all of me. I'm basically laying myself on the guillotine board, ready to get my head chopped off. But this career hasn't taken over my life. I can't get my hopes up. The reason I keep it normal is some day someone else is going to come along and I'm going to be dropped off the charts."

O N North Head, the old military installation overlooking Devonport and Rangitoto, 10 people are scurrying around connecting cables, setting up a dolly track and directing light at the base of a tree using an overhead lamp and a white styrofoam board. This is day two of the video shoot for the single Lifetime, a ballad about losing a loved one, and everyone - camera operators, stylist, producer, director - is waiting for K'Lee.

When the smiling singer finally pops out from behind a caravan, late because she was getting her makeup done in the city, she grabs a chicken sandwich before heading to greet the Universal publicist and the record company's A&R man.

She has to film an interview for a press kit to be sent overseas before she can start the video shoot. K'Lee manages three bites of the sandwich before she is sat down on a concrete slab, sea view behind her, and asked to explain her music.

There are lots of interruptions. An American tour group wafts across the hill, oblivious to the camera. An aeroplane passes. Filming is stopped every time K'Lee, dressed in ripped jeans and a midriff-baring t-shirt and nervously swinging her left leg, uses the word "stuff", a habit her promoters are trying to break.

Between takes, K'Lee twists around to pinch off a bit of bread from her sandwich, hidden behind her back.

In a soft voice which surely could not have uttered the words "these ain't my panties and that ain't my skanky bra" (lyrics from the single 1 + 1 + 1 [It Ain't 2] which reached 12 on the charts) she tells her unseen audience about her aunt, Wendy, a singer who died at age 18. Wendy was the inspiration behind K'Lee's first hit, a remake of Broken Wings by Mr Mister which reached number two on the national chart, and one of the reasons K'Lee is trying to make a career of performance.

Soon Monty Adams, the video director and the man responsible for K'Lee's flawless publicity photos, whisks her away. She emerges from the caravan in a different pair of jeans and a long suede coat with a fluffy collar and cuffs. The sandwich has disappeared. K'Lee smiles and complains of being cold, wrapping what looks like a rabbit fur scarf tightly around her neck before sitting down at the base of the spotlighted tree to get into character.

Y OU don't have to trash yourself to be sexy," says K'Lee with emphasis, rearranging herself on the green sofa. She does not say it, but it seems she is referring to her initial portrayal as an up-for-anything party girl. She has gone through two transformations in the past year, from schoolgirl to sexpot to girl-next-door.

Universal staff said she was particularly unhappy with the fake tan, straightened hair and exaggerated eyeshadow she wore for the Can You Feel Me? video and asked for a meeting.

This is typical K'Lee, says Stephen Nightingale, a music teacher at Waitakere College and her first vocal coach. "She always was a very level-headed teenager - nothing scatty about this girl. She knows what she wants and she won't be pushed around."

Being a realist, she knows there will be critics who dismiss her music and other singers who pick her apart because they don't like her voice, don't think she deserves her chance, or would like to be in her place.

There are internet chat rooms which make fun of her lyrics, with their teen slang and references to African-American culture. But K'Lee likes her songs and she figures she should be applauded for gumption, if nothing else.

"As soon as you put yourself on TV and in magazines, you are putting yourself out there in the public eye to be criticised ... You can't dwell on people's opinions. It's not worth all the stress and the worry, because you're the one who's actually got the guts to get up there and take the risk."

At worst, her risk-taking could make her a one-hit wonder. At best it could lead to big success overseas.

K'Lee sounds like an American singer, which she views as a compliment, and the album is slick. Universal has been getting bites from Australia and the US and, if the album is well received at home, will start pushing her in these markets.

It is hard to believe that just a year ago, K'Lee was a Waitakere College seventh former known as Kaleena who performed in the school's kapa haka group, played netball and starred in drama productions.

"She stood out like the star that she's becoming," said album producer Matty J. Ruys, who met K'Lee at the end of 2000, when she answered a newspaper ad for a vocalist to join an aspiring pop group. The group has yet to be signed to a record company, but K'Lee made an impression on everyone who heard her, says Ruys.

He helped her to seal a deal with Universal and wrote the music for her first album, using K'Lee's own experiences of being "dogged by guys" as inspiration. He and the singer have already started tossing around ideas for the second album. Ruys believes his protege could go far.

Monty Adams so enjoyed working with her that he wants to shoot her next video, something funkier and sexier with dancing. "I think she's very together and very talented, especially for an 18-year-old. She gets it, you know?"

She is also easy to direct, cheerfully putting up with shoots that take up to 26 hours and not complaining when the weather turns sour. K'Lee says it's part of the job, Adams says it's a credit to her good nature.

"[Towards the end of the Lifetime shoot] I said to K'Lee if it rains, you're going to have wet hair stuck to your face. That's how it's going to be."

Stephen Nightingale is watching his former student's progress with pride. In his 22 years as a music teacher he has rarely come across a voice as promising, he says. Having helped several former students to launch recording careers - Vanessa from Deep Obsession and Carly Binding from TrueBliss were both his - he sees a bright, and possibly long, future for the latest. She has the voice and the personality for it, he says. And as she matures, the rest will fall into place.

As for K'Lee, she is taking things as they come. She knows she has been lucky and she is going to push that luck for all it's worth.

"It still shocks me. It still makes me a little bit excited, a little bit nervous and a little bit scared," she says with a slight frown. "It may not work out. At least I can say I used to be a singer."