Second coming of Jamelia

By NICK HASTED

When Jamelia disappeared four years ago, it seemed her coronation as Britain's R&B queen might be postponed for ever. Four hit singles, including the anti-materialist Money, and a 2000 Mobo award were a precocious start for a girl only 18 when her success began.

But an unexpected pregnancy forced a two-year sabbatical, during which time Mis-Teeq, Ms Dynamite and others pushed British R&B into the mainstream. Jamelia also had to escape from an abusive relationship with her baby's father. In retrospect, though, it was the making of her.

While her debut LP, Drama (2000), was, for all its success, syrupy and conventional, its successor, Thank You, is a triumph, exploding with mature musical ideas. The breezily addictive hit Superstar gives little hint of the unconventional creativity elsewhere. The new single, Thank You, is as striking for its psychedelically phased instruments as for its tart retort to her abuser; elsewhere on the album, sexy Saturday-night songs and innovative hooks keep the listener's brain buzzing.

It may be the best British R&B album yet, at last justifying the promise EMI saw in Jamelia when she auditioned for them, aged 15. She is 23 now and, well aware what a surreal leap this is from her working-class Birmingham roots, can hardly contain her delight at the latest turn in her life. Polite, intelligent and bubbling with good-humoured confidence, she's ready to discuss almost anything.

A rare cloud on the horizon is the frustrating failure of Thank You to match the sales of Superstar. The selling-point of its upcoming relaunch is a collaboration with Chris Martin, from her label-mates Coldplay, on the single See It in a Boy's Eyes. That confirms the musical openness that makes Jamelia remarkable.

"It was an excellent collaboration," she enthuses, "because he stays true to his indie roots and I stay true to my R&B roots, and it sounds like a whole new genre. Everyone expects me to collaborate with the Missys and the Jay-Zs, but it's so interesting to work with people outside the genre that you're used to. He had a different way of working. It was: whatever we feel, that's what we're gonna put down; it doesn't matter if it makes sense. I'd love to do it a lot more. I'd love to work with The Darkness - I think they're brilliant!"

Such playful adventurousness defines Thank You, as Jamelia coaxed its producers into adding unlikely sounds - from a sampled voice played as a piano note, to a radio's mobile-phone interference. "There was a lot of compromise on Drama," she remembers. "I was a teenager. I didn't know any better. But this time I've had a lot of creative input. I didn't want anything to sound like anything you've ever heard before.

"I used about nine producers on the album, because I didn't want any two songs to sound the same. I would like to appeal to a wide range of people. That's why American artists are so big. They have had a much longer time at this R&B game than we have. But I definitely feel I have the potential to rival them." She grins at her impertinence.

"I always aim higher than I can reach. Just the fact that I got my record deal shows me that anything's possible."

Jamelia skipped through genres as a child, starting with her mother's taste in reggae and ragga. R&B entered the mix when she was eight.

"I started seeing Aaliyah, Mary J Blige and TLC on TV and I really got into them, because these were people who looked like me," she laughs. "By that time, I'd discovered I could sing, so I drove my mum crazy. I used to listen to the radio obsessively. My mum's punishment for my brothers would be to ground them. But I didn't go out anyway. I wanted to stay in and listen to my karaoke machine. So my mum's punishment for me was to take it and my stereo away."

Other aspects of her background prepared Jamelia for the dislocating strangeness of her later success. Her mother, a community education worker, who had Jamelia when she was 17 and two boys as well by 21, kept her sensible.

" I had a lovely childhood, with morals and values. We weren't rich, but money's not everything - my mum showed me that. Where I grew up, more or less everyone was in single-parent families. Being in such an adverse situation drew us close together. My mum has always been my biggest role model. She's so strong."

This new kind of normal family life had its own quirks. Her father was gone before she was born. "I've been to loads of funerals, which is a bad thing. I've never been to a wedding," Jamelia observes."

When, aged 15, she stood up in an EMI A&R man's office and started to sing, her future was sealed. He offered her a contract on condition that she passed her exams, securing her future even if she failed to achieve stardom.

"My mum used to say to me, 'You're working too hard.' But at that point, I was like, 'I really could be a singer! I could be like Mary J Blige!' Before I got offered my deal, I'd not dreamt of being a singer. It wasn't worth dreaming about, because it would never, ever, happen to me. It was only when I was offered the deal that I realised how much I wanted it."

Unveiled to the public at 18, after three years of grooming, her success with Drama seemed to herald an ascent to stardom. It made her pregnancy more shocking.

"When I first found out I was pregnant, I thought it was the worst thing ever. The worst timing, when everything was going so well. I was so worried, I didn't tell my record label until I was nearly five months pregnant. I thought my career was over. As I won my Mobo, my mum hugged me and said, 'No matter what happens now, at least you've got this to show for it.' And it felt like the end. I thought, 'This is the last thing that's going to happen to me."'

EMI found out only when someone told the Sun.

"I burst into tears and said, 'I am so sorry.' I was so scared, because I'd seen it happen to other artists who are on the way up, get pregnant and are literally [she snaps her fingers dismissively] dropped. But they sent me flowers, and the head of the label said to me, 'Don't worry. When you're ready to come back, let me know."'

During the break, Jamelia finished her musical education. "When I first got a deal I was very complacent," she admits. "When I was ready to come back, I started watching TV programmes like Behind the Music, just to see how the big stars get their status. I learnt so much. With Americans especially, you see that they dedicate 100 per cent of their time to being a musician; they put their all into it; they train like athletes. I was thinking, 'I don't want to be the best in the UK; I want to be the best in the world."'

Even before that, she had removed one dead weight from her life, her daughter's father, the man who beat her and who was responsible for the submissive Jamelia of Drama - and is the subject of Thank You.

"There was a breaking-point when my daughter was born," she remembers. "I thought, 'This cannot carry on. I'm responsible for her.' That gave me the strength to say, 'Forget it.' It's taken me two years to get over it, as far as I can.

"I'm so happy now. Every time I see my daughter smile, it's the most amazing thing."

Performance

* Who: Jamelia

* Where and when: EdgeFest 04, Supertop, Auckland, tomorrow, gates open 3pm; Mystery Creek, Hamilton, Saturday, gates open 2pm

Jamelia will also appear in a Q&A with her producer, Colin Emmanuel, as part of Resonate 2004, Auckland Art Gallery, today from 5-7pm; see Resonate

EdgeFest 04 lineup

Steriogram 3.30-3.50pm

Jamelia 4-4.20pm

Yellowcard 4.30-4.50pm

Scribe 5-5.25pm

Che Fu & the Krates 5.40-6.10pm

Zed 6.15-6.40pm

Elemeno P 6.50-7.15pm

The feelers 7.25-7.50pm

Blindspott 8.05pm-8.30pm

Nesian Mystik 8.40-9.05pm

Alien Ant Farm 9.20-9.50pm

Pacifier 10.10-11.10pm


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