October
The UK’s commercial dubstep pioneer Katy B is playing at Nottingham’s RockCity on 18th October and Birmingham’s O2 Academy on the 20th October, so polish up your Air Force 1’s and head to katyonamission.com for tickets. 69 interviewed Katy about her life, her inspiration and her music:
A heart pounding beat reverberates, an alarm sounds and then a voice, hazy at first, comes into focus: “now I’ve reached my element you better move over!”
Katy B smashed onto the scene late last year with her debut single, ‘Katy On A Mission’ and since then her career has exploded. “I’ve gone on such a mad journey, really.” Katy says laughing in disbelief as we talk to her about her nomination for the Mercury Music Awards on a sun-kissed late summer’s morning. Although she may have missed out on the big award, this year Katy’s already scored four top five singles and a top ten album so it’s safe to say her star is well and truly shining. Despite this whirlwind success that’s seen her go from singing on club tracks to having her debut album crash into the charts at number two, the Katy we talk to today is far from the red-haired temptress seen in her latest single’s video, ‘Witches Brew. With a warm laugh and reassuringly hearty south London accent, she comes across as a normal 22 year old girl who makes sure she makes it home to her Mum’s in Peckham for a Sunday roast. “I haven’t got any aspirations, like ‘I wanna go to number one’” she says humbly, “I just wanna be able to have fun with it, really.” And, that’s just what Katy’s always done.
Starting out playing music on her piano at home, Katy B (or Kathleen Brien to her Mum) got her first break by joining the likes of Adele, Leona and Amy Winehouse at theBritSchoolof Performing Arts. “It was a really good experience” Katy says talking about her time there, “it really prepared me as we did a lot of shows and we had to organise our time and that gave me an introduction of what mic to use, how many rehearsals you need to do for a show and how you can write a song with other people.” After leavingBritSchool, Katy pursued her passion by going on to study Popular Music at Goldsmiths, whilst at the same time hanging out onLondon’s burgeoning grime scene and lending her vocals to various producers, like DJ NG as well as her own band, The Illersapiens.
One night, out at another club night in east London, Katy was by chance introduced to Geeneus, founder of the then pirate radio station, Rinse FM. “I remember him messaging me on MySpace saying he had some grime tracks and some house tracks that he wanted me to sing for, so I was like ‘cool’” she explains “then he sent them over to me on MSN and I remember listening to them and being like, ‘let’s do something’.” Katy had met various managers along the way who wanted to work with her, but there was always something that didn’t feel right: “I’d met managers and stuff, who’d started commenting on my weight or how I looked or stuff like that and I never contacted them again” she remembers, “I was like, ‘this isn’t the kind of vibe’”. But, this time something was different.
So, a hook-up with Geeneus and another Rinse producer Zinc was arranged; the initial idea of the project was that Katy would sing on an album made-up of tracks by various Rinse producers, but it didn’t pan out that way. “We started making it and then over time it just turned into my own thing” Katy remembers, “it started feeling a bit disjointed with all the different producers on every single track; I worked well with Zinc and Geeneus and just zoned in on that and went for it.” Unlike the managers and producers before, Katy felt a real affinity with Geeneus and Zinc. “I feel really relaxed and at home with them. They know how good I can be and they know how shit I can be as well, I guess they can get a good performance out of me” she says with a laugh.
What came out of the sessions was Katy B’s debut, a heady mix of everything from grime to funk to soul, with pop right at its core. Opener ‘Power On Me’ is mesmerising trance, whilst single ‘Easy Please Me’ is sleazy big beat with honey dripped vocals. The album stays true to both Katy and Rinse’s roots; taking its influences from both her producers and Katy’s own iPod: “I had the Wiley album, Playtime Is Over, that was kind of a big album” she tells us about her playlist whilst recording the album, “there was an album that was also released on Rinse, it was DJ Wonder and it had a lot of different artists on it with a big grime production”. Katy’s vocals are decadently rich yet deceptively powerful; she can go from the seductive coo of ‘Witches Brew’ to the street put down of ‘Why You Always Here’. I was listening to lots of soul, like Eryka Badu, lots of D’Angelo” Katy tells us about her vocal inspiration when recording the album. “At the same time just lots of different things like LA stuff, like Flying Lotus all those electronicy vocals, Jenna G her album that drum n bass album”.
Each track on the record is like turning over a worn page of Katy’s diary as she sings about everything from going out clubbing, relationships to breaking-up. “I wrote that album from when I was 18 to 21” Katy explains, “I was going out a lot; with Rinse they run a lot of club nights I was going to FWRD every week or their bigger raves … and then at the same time I had a boyfriend and all that stuff going on. Working it all out, really.” Part of working it out was by putting pen to paper: “I was getting instrumentals and I was writing songs over the top of them” Katy reveals about the recording “I kind of wrote about whatever emotion the beat made me feel”. Talking about individual tracks, she explains, “‘Katy On A Mission’ that really made me feel of just being in the middle of a dance floor, so I thought let me just write about how I feel in my element on a night out surrounded by my best friends, dancing and being in that element. Then on another track something like ‘Go Away’ or ‘Disappear’ they made me feel not sad but even just desperate really”. This synchronicity between the beats and melodies on each track is what draws listeners further into Katy’s world and making her so relatable as an artist.
Rinse, now an official radio station and label in its’ own right, partnered-up with major label Columbia to release the album, but Katy is still very much in control of her game.” When I met Rinse I got from the very start that they’re passionate about music, that’s their aim and that was what I liked about them. They’re also really down-to-earth and cool and we got on really well right from the start” Katy recalls, “The great thing with Rinse, I’m still signed to them they’ve done some stuff with Columbia to license the music to them” Katy continues, “but, the great thing is that we have creative control over everything so it’s been really good.”
With the release of the album Katy hit the road earlier this year with one of grime’s most successful players Tinie Tempah, something she only has good things to say about: “Tinie was really sweet and lovely” Katy says, “he came in on the first day and said, ‘if you lot want to come and jam with us it’s fine… he made me feel very welcome”. She’s set to hit the road again this October on her own headline tour, something she’s really pumped about: “It’s going to be a full live band; I’ve got trumpets, saxophones and hopefully I’ll have some backing vocals this time. I will have an MC to hype up the crowd so there’ll be a lot of energy” she says, “kind of a mixture really between a concert and a rave.”
With her debut album still wet behind the ears, barely a year old, Katy’s surprisingly already thinking about starting album number two after the tour, as she tells us: “I’ve written a couple of songs already that I really like and might go on there”. On the next record, she’s also considering getting more people on board: “I think on the next album I’ll definitely work with some other people; I still really like working with G and Zinc, definitely, they’re very talented but if I could work with anyone? My dream collaboration for my whole entire career would be to duet with Alicia Keys, because when I was growing-up she was a massive influence on me.” Katy’s still keen to stay true to herself and her debut, as she explains: “I really like my sound first of all, I like my music being quite energetic; what I like about music is either it making you want to dance or lyrics that relate to me as long as I’ve got that, I think I’ll be cool.”
With a winning production team, hit album and tour booked Katy’s still keeping her promise of having fun and is already on her way to achieving her mission, as she says “I just want to keep making albums and keep being creative that’s all I want really.”
Marie Wood
Here’s a little taster of what you can expect from Katy B live. Incredible.
