Slick and soulful Brit pop star

Lemar

Lemar Obika doesn't get much time to party. "Just little things," he says, like the recent Robbie Williams shindig he attended, or the time he sang to a bunch of movie stars at Cannes, after his cameo role in the Cole Porter biopic, De Lovely.

When he heads home to London he'll prepare a little something for his appearance at a polo match for Prince Charles and his sons.

Yesterday the 27-year-old artist known simply as "Lemar" arrived in New Zealand at 1am for 12 hours of interviews with local media. Such is life for the pop star, whose number one single If There's Any Justice spent longer in the British charts than Williams' Angels and is one of the most played songs in England. His new album, Time To Grow will be released here next week.

"I'm a little bit more laidback than the average person," he says, leaning back on a couch at his swanky waterfront hotel, shades hiding his fatigue. "Life gets easier but the work triples so you have to stay as calm and laidback and unfazed as possible so you can get through it."

Three years after British TV talent quest Fame Academy catapulted him into the public eye (he came fourth and was the only one to get a record deal), it looks unlikely Lemar's hectic schedule will wane.

In the past year he has performed two British tours, one to promote his debut album, Dedicated, the second on the back of its follow-up, Time To Grow. A slick pop affair drawing on old-school soul and R&B, it's Lemar's answer to a music landscape saturated by mediocre R&B. It even features a cover of the Darkness' I Believe in a Thing Called Love.

"I wanted to make this album more soulful, put the strings and horns in where possible, keep that live feel and write songs with a bit more substance. A lot of songs these days are about diamonds and cars and the houses and what I've got, what you haven't got, how big I am and how small you are.

"I've tried to keep a bit more substance, keep things on more of an emotional level. There's a song about miscarriage, about young people having sex too early, just giving them a bit of advice.

"It's sentimental and people can dance to it but if you take a closer listen you can see a tender side, a more sentimental side." So how does he explain his gigs then? When he performed to a packed Glasgow venue last month he came dripping in bling and did a bit of a striptease, before getting almost the entire audience on their feet.

"I was just trying to make this tour a little step up from the last and I think I've learnt a lot from being on stage in the last year, performing every day on TV shows and radio shows. I think a very important part about being on stage is losing yourself, just being in the moment and not thinking about being on stage. When you do that, people feel it and appreciate it that much more."

CD

*What: Lemar Obika
*Album: Time to Grow
*When: Released next week