Tulisa - The Biography

by Newkey-Burden, Chas

  Ironically, she was filming a scene in which her character had burst into tears after learning someone she loved had died. She cut an onion up when she had to cry during a scene. When merely cutting the onion didn’t do the trick, she simply held the two halves of the onion directly against her eyes. The production team also used a tear stick to help spark the sobs. Art was mirroring life in the most painful way. Tulisa had found that the best way to prepare for such a scene was to imagine that she really had been bereaved in real life. Just before she filmed the scene she had been sitting imagining how she would feel if she lost someone dear to her. Meanwhile, Fazer and Dappy were discussing how best to tell her that her beloved Uncle B had died. That same day, she turned her mobile phone on to discover a rash of texts from her two band-mates. All the messages said were that they needed to speak to her soon about something important.

  She immediately feared the worst and phoned Dappy to ask what the matter was. He would not tell Tulisa over the phone and instead arranged to drive to the filming location to tell her in person. Meanwhile, the cast and crew members did their best to comfort Tulisa as her mind raced through a series of tragic possibilities. A feeling inside her grew. She tried to phone other family members as she waited in the hope that they could tell her what had happened. As fate would have it she could not get through to anyone by phone. When Dappy and Fazer arrived, Tulisa could not wait for them to get to the heart of the matter and tell her what was going on. She quickly lost her patience and shouted at them, demanding they just come out and tell her. Dappy told her to sit down and prepare for some bad news. He then said: ‘Are you ready for this? B’s dead.’ Tulisa’s body went immediately into shock. She felt her heart rate soar as the news sunk in. Her last memory was a fear that she was going to have a heart attack. Then she remembers falling and someone holding her as she sank to the ground. She eventually came to and became hysterical. She cried floods of tears and made the sort of loud wailing noise that is only ever made by someone in the immediate stages of grief.

  ‘I couldn’t stop it,’ she recalled in Against All Odds. ‘They took me out on to a patch of grass outside and I kept crying hysterically.’ After a while she composed herself and faced the obvious reality that while she had lost an uncle and a mentor, her band-mate Dappy had lost something even more intensely precious – a father. So she hugged him and offered her condolences. At the time, she remembered later, Dappy was absolutely cold with grief. There was no crying or outward signs of grieving; instead he was ‘numb’, she said. They got a lift home and sat in silence in the back seat of the car. It was a beautiful spring evening and they were sitting in the back of a convertible car with the roof down. What should have been an almost idyllic experience was instead laced with tragedy. They held hands and dealt silently with their emotions.

  The following day the band was booked to perform a live show. Initially, they felt they were unable to fulfil the booking. However, with Fazer taking the lead in this, the band decided that they would honour the commitment. B had worked so hard to get them where they were. Surely pressing on with their career was the only way to honour him. Indeed, as Fazer reminded Tulisa and Dappy, B had seemingly died while waiting to see the band’s video on television. When they took to the stage their emotions were raw. His supportive presence from the wings was a stark omission. At the end of the show they were pleased to have honoured not just the booking, but the memory of their father and uncle. Then the sense of grief came flooding over them once more.

  For Tulisa, grief was not the only challenging emotion. She almost felt a sense of responsibility, bordering on guilt. Even though the two had settled their differences before he died, she still felt that the pressures of working for the band had made him ill, and ultimately claimed his life. She wrote in Against All Odds: ‘All the stress and pressure that came from getting us to where we were pretty much killed him, so he died for our success.’ Strong words and a sentiment echoed by Fazer in the song ‘Papa’, where he sings: ‘It’s like you sacrificed your life, for the love of success and a life full of stress.’ He repeated the sentiment in the same book as Tulisa. Dappy was hardest hit, of course. He too felt that B’s death had been caused in part by his efforts on their behalf. ‘Obviously, we never had much money and he spent it all and got unhealthy, just smoking and the stress of thinking, “Am I going to get them to the top?”’ said Dappy. He was left feeling very alone in the world. ‘He guided me for 18 years,’ he said a few years later. ‘He was my dad and my best friend, that’s why I called him B, never Dad. When he died I was lost.’ All three band members continue to this day to be guided and motivated in their lives by their memories of their hero.

  The band needed to face these horrific emotions together. The loss of B made them closer and tighter as people and as a band. Remarkably, even in death, B was firing them onwards and fuelling their energy and ambition. An early watershed moment in the post-B era came when they won a MOBO award. It was in the Best UK Newcomer category, which had been voted for by viewers of the ITV local news programme London Tonight. They were up against Tinchy Stryder, Mutya Buena, Sadie Ama and UnkleJam. Tulisa had been convinced that the award would go to Mutya Buena rather than her act. There was a huge cheer when N-Dubz was announced as the winner. Tulisa strode to the stage alongside Dappy and Fazer. Dappy took the award and led the audience in a chant of ‘Naa Naa Niiii’. After thanking members of the band’s management, his mother and friends, Dappy said: ‘Most of all I want to say thank you to my Dad, rest in peace. RIP, thank you very much.’ He then passed the microphone to Tulisa who thanked the fans, her family and ‘most of all Uncle B for putting his heart and soul into us and getting us where we are today.’ Securing the award had been so important for the band – all the more so because of B’s death. Tulisa felt that Dappy in particular ‘couldn’t bear the thought of not getting it’ after all they had been through. Elsewhere that evening, Amy Winehouse was crowned best female vocalist while Dizzee Rascal was named best male. However, for N-Dubz the evening was all about honouring Uncle B. Tulisa said later that they felt his spirit was present in the arena. The band would go on to win further MOBO awards.

  In the months that followed, Tulisa looked back over the influence that B had on her life, both musically and beyond. Memories kept flashing back, including the time he taught her karate during a family holiday in Greece. He had not merely shown her the physical moves but also the more esoteric and emotional techniques behind them, including the concepts of ‘cleansing the soul, positive and negative energy and that kind of thing’. She said that many of his concepts about spirituality helped influence her own spiritual and ultimately religious journey (a journey we shall return to in due course).

  What a legacy he had left in the life of his treasured niece. He would have been delighted to see that in the wake of his death, all his devoted hard work began to pay off. Finally, the band was going places. In 2007 they signed to Polydor Records. To get a record deal with such a label was a major success for them. The UK arm of the label has released the material of hit acts including Slade, Girls Aloud, Kaiser Chiefs, The Saturday and S Club 7. Internationally it has released the work of the likes of the Black Eyed Peas – a band N-Dubz have sometimes been compared with – Emimen, Queens of the Stone Age and Pussycat Dolls. What a prestigious rostrum Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer were joining. Their first release on Polydor was a reissue of ‘You Better Not Waste My Time’. It reached UK No 26. The band considered this ‘a result’, particularly given that it had been released previously.

  Then, in 2008, the band released a new song called ‘Ouch’. The video for the song was uploaded to YouTube and received four million views within a month. It was clear that Tulisa’s music was connecting with the public. However, the relationship between the band and their label soured soon after when the band played Polydor some of their other songs. The label bigwigs were not having any of it. They disliked everything they heard, including ‘Ouch’ and ‘Papa’. Having rejected m
any of the band’s songs – which felt like precious babies to Tulisa, Fazer and Dappy – Polydor then made broader efforts to mould the band into a different outfit. First, the label suggested that song-writers join the band in composing new songs. The band felt that the aim of this was to take them in a different direction – not a direction they were happy to go in. They gave Polydor’s ideas a go, including a studio session with a producer and songwriter who had worked with George Michael and X Factor winner Leona Lewis, respectively. ‘It wasn’t us,’ reflected Tulisa, who felt they would have been selling out to go along with Polydor’s plans.

  She actually felt that Polydor simply did not understand what N-Dubz were about. This is a far from uncommon complaint from bands signed to big labels. Often, the reality is that the label actually does understand what a band is about, but simply wants the band to be about something different. She also complained that Polydor had insufficient faith in them. None of the label’s doubts did anything to shake her belief in what N-Dubz could achieve. She thought Polydor were nothing short of ‘completely mad’ for not supporting them and their vision. Her suspicion was that Polydor wanted to make them appeal to a broader age group than the band had in mind. In fairness, it would have been a stretch to make a band true to the original N-Dubz vision appeal to any substantial numbers of music fans above the age of 30. The end was nigh, and the band say it was a symbolic moment that made them decide to ditch Polydor. They were travelling to a gig and their van pulled into a petrol station. Tulisa, Dappy and Fazer hopped out and were recognised by a young girl. She told them she remembered them: ‘You had that song out ages ago.’ Whether this is one of those ‘legends’ that get written into a band’s history, or an entirely authentic story, it certainly crystallises the fears that Tulisa had at the time. Two immediate and undesirable options existed: toeing the Polydor line and watering down their vision, or giving up entirely and becoming one of music’s could-have-been stories, not even memorable enough to exist in a ‘whatever happened to’ pub discussion.

  Instead, they eyed a musical ‘third way’: audaciously cutting their ties with Polydor and seeking a new label to call home. Many established acts leave a big record label but to do so at such a fledgling point in one’s career takes particular self-confidence. Tulisa had rarely lacked belief in the band, neither had Dappy and Fazer. Their self-assurance had been given a major boost by the arrival of their new legendary manager, Professor Jonathan Shalit. He was best known for having discovered Welsh singer Charlotte Church, who sold more than 5 million CDs with him, and for his ‘rediscovery’ of harmonica player Larry Adler, who recorded an album with him featuring the likes of Cher, Sir Elton John and Sting. He has also guided and managed the careers of Myleene Klass, Lorraine Kelly and Kelly Brook. He has also been a successful manager of urban-styled acts, including Jamelia and Big Brovaz, who both enjoyed critical and commercial success while under his wing and won eight MOBO awards between them. He is a regular in industry power lists and has himself estimated dining at the Ivy restaurant hundreds of times a year. The owner even once even took out an advertisement in an industry magazine thanking Shalit for his regular custom! Shalit has been described as ‘a legend in his own lunchtime’.

  Shalit had expressed an interest in managing the band even before B passed away. Tulisa said that while her uncle had initially been opposed to the idea he had begun to change his mind a few days before his death. They were left in need of a new mentor and when they researched Shalit’s track record they were, naturally, very impressed. They met him and decided to sign up with his company, Roar Global. It is a relationship that continues to this day. After leaving Polydor they signed to a smaller label called All Around The World. The label’s announcement of its new acquisition included a howler of a mistake. It read: ‘MOBO award-winning N-Dubz have found a new home with AATW. Hailing from Camden in south London the trio’s music has variably been described as hip-hop, garage and RnB but their style is pretty unique, blending traditional song structure and inspired lyrics with distinctly urban elements and influences.’ The description of their musical sound was close enough to the mark, but given how central Camden Town has always been to the band’s image, it was a particularly bad error for the label to describe Camden, arguably the most celebrated district of north London, as being in south London.

  The band added its own statement to the announcement. It was a diverting combination of confidence and cheek. ‘You’ve heard of us, even if you don’t know it yet,’ it began. ‘Remember that boy driving you mad every morning on the No 42? The one playing music on his mobile at full volume? He’s listening to our music. So is his sister, his best mate, his best mate’s older brother and his teacher. Throughout our career we’ve strived to become masters of the melody, kings of the chorus and rulers of the ad lib, simply put we balance straight-up pop smashes with a street smart style and our music’s for everyone. We make songs for your mum, your dad and your nan.’ After adding some more background to their act, and also revealing some of their signature sayings, it concluded with an ebullient promise. ‘We know it’s rare to come across a group you totally believe in and there are a lot of good acts in the UK, but great ones? Not so many, but we definitely aim to change that…’

  They would succeed in their aim but first there was to be more trouble and controversy. By this stage, Tulisa needed to respond to something that she would become quite familiar with in the years to come: controversy erupting around her cousin Dappy. He recorded a song called ‘Love For My Slum’ with another artist, and then filmed a promotional video for it. In one 10-second segment of the video, Dappy stands next to a character labelled as ‘rich boy’ and angrily warns, then punches the rich boy, who falls to the ground. A newspaper asked whether the video encouraged young music fans to pursue a life of ‘criminality’, adding that ‘senior members’ of the Metropolitan police believed it certainly did. Superintendent Leroy Logan of Hackney police, a former Chairman of the Black Police Association, spoke of ‘Those out there who are keen on hijacking the [grime music] scene, and using these videos to spread negativity, anger, and aggression. And whether the messages are coded or explicit, they often play themselves out on the street.’

  Another extra-curricular venture Dappy took part in was a track called ‘Babylon Fi Get Shot’, which he recorded alongside another rapper called Face Killa. For those unfamiliar with street lingo, the song’s title translates roughly as ‘Police to get shot’. He has since distanced himself from the song and the sentiment. ‘I was young and dumb, and I’ve grown up a lot since then. I’m an adult now and turned my back on those views a long time ago as they are wrong,’ he said. ‘Doing the job I do now has made me realise you don’t have to hate the police and be negative about them. N-Dubz are all about positivity.’

  However, he also made more positive appearances in the mainstream media, which in turn brought Tulisa further into the public mind. In the autumn of 2007, he appeared on the BBC’s music panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Host Simon Amstell described him as being part of ‘urban collective N-Dubz’. He soon made jokes at Dappy’s expense, saying that Lee Ryan from the boy band Blue had been booked but had pulled out at the last moment, adding: ‘I won’t say who replaced him, I shouldn’t say that, should I, N-Dubz?’

  Dappy then produced one of his famous hats, and asked the audience: ‘Who wants to see Simon wear a Dappy hat?’

  He threw the hat to Amstell who calmly placed it to one side, and carried on with the show, promising ‘I’ll wear it later.’ In due course, he encouraged Dappy to remove his own hat so the audience could see how he looked without it. As Dappy obliged, Amstell commented: ‘It’s Kenzie from Blazin’ Squad.’

  Noel Fielding said: ‘I was thinking more Stan Laurel.’ He added that the hat made him look like a ‘woollen dog’ or a ‘knitted poodle’. Dappy might have preferred to be a Doberman, if he had to be a dog at all. He took it all in as good humour as he could, though. Tulisa, too, must have giggled when
she watched it.

  There was plenty more fun surrounding Dappy during the show. He tried – and failed – to lead the audience in a sing-along of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’. It’s always cringe-worthy when such attempts fall flat. He then joked that Willie Nelson looked ‘perverse’ in a video they were shown. He then joked that it looked as if Nelson was saying to a woman with his smile, ‘If I had you alone for two seconds I would smash your back doors in.’ He said that Camden Town is the capital of London, asking the audience, ‘Who knows about Camden Town?’ only to be met by silent indifference.

  ‘Please stop talking to them,’ pleaded Amstell.

  Dappy threatened Fielding, saying that ‘the people who listen to my music’ would take him to task for mocking his hat. He and Phil Jupitus made hard work of the ‘intros’ round in which they perform the introduction of a song for the third team member to guess. Why, Amstell asked Dappy, did he give him a hat with a smaller bobble than his? ‘That was the last one I had under my bed,’ replied Dappy. All in all, it had been a memorable appearance by Dappy, whose quirky charisma had captured the attention of viewers and consequently brought N-Dubz to the attention of new people. He would go on to become quite the Buzzcocks cult legend.

  Tulisa, too, was appearing on television in 2007 and was pleased to have a foot in an industry in which she had long held aspirations to work. As we have seen, she appeared in the UK television series Dubplate Drama. When it was launched in the autumn of 2005, Dubplate Drama caught the attention of viewers as it was billed as the world’s first interactive drama series. It followed characters including MC Shystie and a female MC called Dionne. Tulisa, who was 17 when it launched, loved watching it, describing it as ‘the best thing I had ever seen’. She felt that here was a programme that was ‘pretty much’ about her and her friends. Viewers would be given the chance to vote on the outcome of each episode, an exciting melding of the drama and the popular reality television formats of the likes of Big Brother and the X Factor with their public votes. ‘We made it interactive because we want young people to talk about the various issues raised by the weekly dilemmas,’ said co-founder Michelle Clothier, of the youth marketing group Livity. ‘Young people have less loyalty to brands and programmes than before so we wanted to use as many media as possible.’