Katy B: One step beyond
Katy B cut her teeth on London’s dubstep scene – but now the charts and breakfast TV are calling. The 21-year-old tells Rebecca Nicholson why she’ll always be a raver at heart In skinny jeans, red jumper and Vans trainers, her freshly dyed red hair pulled back, South London’s Katy B is a different kind of pop star. Somehow she’s got all bases covered, juggling white label, pirate-station authenticity and one-of-us, we-could-be-mates appeal. While the media still hypes indie bands, it’s an increasingly desperate endeavour: this week, the entire top 40 features just one – Noah and the Whale at No 19. Just as they have for the past two years, pop, dance and R&B continue to reign supreme, and Katy B, whose irresistible pop-dubstep single Katy on a Mission hit the top five last summer, is the current sound of both the clubs and the charts. At the east London headquarters of Rinse FM , the pirate station turned legit broadcaster which has been pushing the dubstep, grime and UK funky of London’s underground since its inception, Katy is busy attending to the business of being a pop star, choosing clothes for TV appearances and planning rehearsals for the live show she’s about to take on the road. Rinse is also home to her record label and management, and she spends her mornings here, working and hanging out. Today, she drops into the Grimey Breakfast Show, broadcasting from the studio next door, to mess around on air with host Scratcha . She gets her hair and makeup done for a series of photoshoots, gossips with her stylist about celeb-mag favourites Peter Andre and “new love” Elen Rivas, and fills me in on the EastEnders baby-swap storyline. It’s like going to the hairdresser, if the hairdresser had a healthy interest in the state of dubstep as well as holidays in Turkey with her mates. Born Kathleen Brien (“the most Irish name ever”) to a plumber father and postwoman mother, Katy grew up in Peckham, south-east London and learned her trade as a vocalist on the underground dance scene. She appeared as Baby Katy on DJ NG’s Tell Me when she was just 16, working mostly with bedroom producers whose records got picked up by pirate radio stations across the capital. In the four years since then, she has criss-crossed genres, singing over drum’n’bass, house, dubstep and its latest mutation UK funky, finally coming up with a debut album, On a Mission, that mixes up those styles into something both credible and accessible. There are mixed-up elements in Katy herself, too. She finished a degree in popular music at Goldsmiths university last year, at around the same time as she filmed her first music video. Her course involved writing an essay about UK funky , “the social elements around it and how it developed and stuff”, which she probably knew more about than the person marking her. Although her relationship with Rinse was well underway, she did the degree regardless: “I just wanted to learn more about music and I didn’t want to fall into getting a job and not pursuing it, so I thought it would keep me on that path.” And though she found her way into music through club nights and on pirate stations, she’s been a performer looking to turn pro since she was a child, auditioning for Annie in the West End when she was eight. “That was the first time I had to sing. I auditioned to be Hermione in Harry Potter as well. They were like, ‘Have you read the book?’ I was like, ‘No.’ ‘Next!’” When she was 14, she went to the Brit school for performing arts in Croydon, where she was in the year below Adele and Jessie J . “If people think it’s all singing, dancing and acting, well that’s what I wanted, do you know what I mean?” she says, insisting that going to stage school didn’t earn her any stick from the hipper-than-thou dance community. “I met all my best friends and I loved it,” she says, before summing up her overground/underground appeal completely. “But I didn’t make my music there, I did it outside. The first tune that I released, I
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Katy B: One step beyond
Katy B cut her teeth on London’s dubstep scene – but now the charts and breakfast TV are calling. The 21-year-old tells Rebecca Nicholson why she’ll always be a raver at heart In skinny jeans, red jumper and Vans trainers, her freshly dyed red hair pulled back, South London’s Katy B is a different kind of pop star. Somehow she’s got all bases covered, juggling white label, pirate-station authenticity and one-of-us, we-could-be-mates appeal. While the media still hypes indie bands, it’s an increasingly desperate endeavour: this week, the entire top 40 features just one – Noah and the Whale at No 19. Just as they have for the past two years, pop, dance and R&B continue to reign supreme, and Katy B, whose irresistible pop-dubstep single Katy on a Mission hit the top five last summer, is the current sound of both the clubs and the charts. At the east London headquarters of Rinse FM , the pirate station turned legit broadcaster which has been pushing the dubstep, grime and UK funky of London’s underground since its inception, Katy is busy attending to the business of being a pop star, choosing clothes for TV appearances and planning rehearsals for the live show she’s about to take on the road. Rinse is also home to her record label and management, and she spends her mornings here, working and hanging out. Today, she drops into the Grimey Breakfast Show, broadcasting from the studio next door, to mess around on air with host Scratcha . She gets her hair and makeup done for a series of photoshoots, gossips with her stylist about celeb-mag favourites Peter Andre and “new love” Elen Rivas, and fills me in on the EastEnders baby-swap storyline. It’s like going to the hairdresser, if the hairdresser had a healthy interest in the state of dubstep as well as holidays in Turkey with her mates. Born Kathleen Brien (“the most Irish name ever”) to a plumber father and postwoman mother, Katy grew up in Peckham, south-east London and learned her trade as a vocalist on the underground dance scene. She appeared as Baby Katy on DJ NG’s Tell Me when she was just 16, working mostly with bedroom producers whose records got picked up by pirate radio stations across the capital. In the four years since then, she has criss-crossed genres, singing over drum’n’bass, house, dubstep and its latest mutation UK funky, finally coming up with a debut album, On a Mission, that mixes up those styles into something both credible and accessible. There are mixed-up elements in Katy herself, too. She finished a degree in popular music at Goldsmiths university last year, at around the same time as she filmed her first music video. Her course involved writing an essay about UK funky , “the social elements around it and how it developed and stuff”, which she probably knew more about than the person marking her. Although her relationship with Rinse was well underway, she did the degree regardless: “I just wanted to learn more about music and I didn’t want to fall into getting a job and not pursuing it, so I thought it would keep me on that path.” And though she found her way into music through club nights and on pirate stations, she’s been a performer looking to turn pro since she was a child, auditioning for Annie in the West End when she was eight. “That was the first time I had to sing. I auditioned to be Hermione in Harry Potter as well. They were like, ‘Have you read the book?’ I was like, ‘No.’ ‘Next!’” When she was 14, she went to the Brit school for performing arts in Croydon, where she was in the year below Adele and Jessie J . “If people think it’s all singing, dancing and acting, well that’s what I wanted, do you know what I mean?” she says, insisting that going to stage school didn’t earn her any stick from the hipper-than-thou dance community. “I met all my best friends and I loved it,” she says, before summing up her overground/underground appeal completely. “But I didn’t make my music there, I did it outside. The first tune that I released, I
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on March 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News.
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Katy B: One step beyond
Katy B cut her teeth on London’s dubstep scene – but now the charts and breakfast TV are calling. The 21-year-old tells Rebecca Nicholson why she’ll always be a raver at heart In skinny jeans, red jumper and Vans trainers, her freshly dyed red hair pulled back, South London’s Katy B is a different kind of pop star. Somehow she’s got all bases covered, juggling white label, pirate-station authenticity and one-of-us, we-could-be-mates appeal. While the media still hypes indie bands, it’s an increasingly desperate endeavour: this week, the entire top 40 features just one – Noah and the Whale at No 19. Just as they have for the past two years, pop, dance and R&B continue to reign supreme, and Katy B, whose irresistible pop-dubstep single Katy on a Mission hit the top five last summer, is the current sound of both the clubs and the charts. At the east London headquarters of Rinse FM , the pirate station turned legit broadcaster which has been pushing the dubstep, grime and UK funky of London’s underground since its inception, Katy is busy attending to the business of being a pop star, choosing clothes for TV appearances and planning rehearsals for the live show she’s about to take on the road. Rinse is also home to her record label and management, and she spends her mornings here, working and hanging out. Today, she drops into the Grimey Breakfast Show, broadcasting from the studio next door, to mess around on air with host Scratcha . She gets her hair and makeup done for a series of photoshoots, gossips with her stylist about celeb-mag favourites Peter Andre and “new love” Elen Rivas, and fills me in on the EastEnders baby-swap storyline. It’s like going to the hairdresser, if the hairdresser had a healthy interest in the state of dubstep as well as holidays in Turkey with her mates. Born Kathleen Brien (“the most Irish name ever”) to a plumber father and postwoman mother, Katy grew up in Peckham, south-east London and learned her trade as a vocalist on the underground dance scene. She appeared as Baby Katy on DJ NG’s Tell Me when she was just 16, working mostly with bedroom producers whose records got picked up by pirate radio stations across the capital. In the four years since then, she has criss-crossed genres, singing over drum’n’bass, house, dubstep and its latest mutation UK funky, finally coming up with a debut album, On a Mission, that mixes up those styles into something both credible and accessible. There are mixed-up elements in Katy herself, too. She finished a degree in popular music at Goldsmiths university last year, at around the same time as she filmed her first music video. Her course involved writing an essay about UK funky , “the social elements around it and how it developed and stuff”, which she probably knew more about than the person marking her. Although her relationship with Rinse was well underway, she did the degree regardless: “I just wanted to learn more about music and I didn’t want to fall into getting a job and not pursuing it, so I thought it would keep me on that path.” And though she found her way into music through club nights and on pirate stations, she’s been a performer looking to turn pro since she was a child, auditioning for Annie in the West End when she was eight. “That was the first time I had to sing. I auditioned to be Hermione in Harry Potter as well. They were like, ‘Have you read the book?’ I was like, ‘No.’ ‘Next!’” When she was 14, she went to the Brit school for performing arts in Croydon, where she was in the year below Adele and Jessie J . “If people think it’s all singing, dancing and acting, well that’s what I wanted, do you know what I mean?” she says, insisting that going to stage school didn’t earn her any stick from the hipper-than-thou dance community. “I met all my best friends and I loved it,” she says, before summing up her overground/underground appeal completely. “But I didn’t make my music there, I did it outside. The first tune that I released, I
Posted by
on March 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News.
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