by Alan Pedder | view as PDF

Imagine admitting to Beyoncé Knowles that you don’t really ‘get’ modern R&B, or telling Whitney Houston that you thought her last album was, well, a bit rubbish. Sparks might fly, tempers could fray and steely gazes would most certainly be fixed upon you. Not that you’d likely get the chance, of course. Today’s diva main comes with a hefty side order of interfering, overprotective PR and a carefully steered interview template. But 26 year old Londoner Terri Walker is by no means such a fusspot or drama queen. When Alan Pedder goes to meet her at a posh champagne bar in Soho (“my label owners run it, it’s just easier,” she explains), the absence of any press rep whatsoever is conspicuously refreshing. “I’ve been here on my own for hours!” she beams. Now, about that last album...

“I’m not good at being fake,” she laughs. “I wasn’t disappointed with L.O.V.E. itself... I mean, it’s definitely not me, Terri Walker, because Terri Walker isn’t really the whole poppy side of things. I like my music to be fun, I like it to be witty, but the whole commercial aspect, no. If it had been up to me, that album wouldn’t have been the way it was. A lot of the songs are still me, but there’s four or five tracks that definitely aren’t!”

With her stylishly quirky debut Untitled (2003) scoring four nods at the MOBOs and a prestigious Mercury Music Award nomination, you’d have thought that an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach might have been better, but as Terri explains: “Basically, the first album didn’t sell tons and they [that is, her then label Def Jam UK/Mercury] wanted me to open more doors. But they didn’t want to spend any money on tours and live performances, which they should have known is my strongest point, being out there properly singing. Not just going down the clubs and getting on the mic and saying ‘hey wassup!’, you know.”

She’s right on the money, of course. I attended one of Terri’s recent showcases for her new album I Am, her first for London-based record label Dekkor, and was quite blown away by the sheer quality of her voice — a powerful blend of classic soul influences and neo-soul sparkle — and her positively infectious enthusiasm. Her frankness, too, was welcomingly apparent; “Here’s another single that didn’t get released,” she cackled without inhibition as she launched into one of L.O.V.E.’s overlooked finer moments in front of an industry audience.

Everything about the new album, it seems, from the title in, is about reclaiming her sense of self. “Completely!” she nods. “I Am is basically saying I don’t care what people think. I’ve gotten rid of my weave and I’m back to my natural hair, being who I am. I just thought I had to show that to people because others, you know, get caught up in the industry, trying to be on the cover of heat... I mean, who gives a damn?”

She can certainly speak from experience on that front. Whilst in the Def Jam camp, Terri professes to having been under pressure from the label to conform to certain media expectations. “Oh god yeah, I was told to lose weight, to look a certain way, to be at this party or that party, to mingle with such and such a person, and that was so not me. If I don’t like you, you are gonna know about it!” she laughs. “Or, y’know, I’ll just say nothing. That whole thing, to me, was awful. I’d much rather hang out with my friends, have a laugh, watch DVDs and just be stupid. I do have to work, obviously, but to me it shouldn’t have to be that way.”

Things at Dekkor, it seems, are much more to her liking. So often with R&B music it’s difficult to see where the artist begins and the super-producer or record label ends, but Terri appears to enjoy a great deal more artistic freedom than most. “I basically said to them before I signed to them, ‘I’m gonna do what I wanna do and if you don’t like it, I’m not signing to you!’... and they were like ‘Terri, do your thing’, you know. She grins triumphantly. “And you’re right about the distinction. I hope that a lot of people will be able to pick me out and say ‘that’s Terri Walker’. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to just sing about what I wanna sing about and to have my own style, so yeah, it’s great!”

As you might expect, the Terri Walker style is no static concept and takes in a wider range of influences than your average pop star. Untitled, for example, features the minute-long interlude Deutschland, a song she wrote in German from scratch. “I lived in Germany from when I was about four ‘til the age of seventeen, eighteen, so Germany, for me, is sort of like my first home. You know your teen years are really what sort of moulds you, so it made me what I am. It’s a brilliant country. Will I write another song in German? Hopefully! I wouldn’t mind actually doing a whole album in German. It’s a bit weird, some of the phrasing, but not as harsh as you’d think.”

I ask her why she thinks it is that black British female R&B artists often don’t get the accolades or commerical rewards of their American counterparts, and why, even when they do, their success is so short-lived. “The thing is, the Americans come out with it quicker and faster and it’s such quality, isn’t it? Once you’ve already had a Beyoncé and someone comes and tries to do another thing like that, people will think she’s not as good as Beyoncé ‘cos she came out first. It’s weird, I look at Mica Paris and Chaka Khan, both of whom are phenomenal for me, but because Chaka Khan came out first people are always gonna compare Mica Paris to her. But Chaka Khan is actually a big ass fan of Mica Paris, but people never look at that.”

She talks excitedly for a moment about getting involved with the tenth anniversary of In Celebration Of My Sisters, an annual event featuring a wide range of black singers (including Mica Paris and, er, Voices With Soul from The X Factor), actresses, comediennes, poets and dancers all paying homage to International Women’s Month. “They asked me to be a part of it, celebrating the sisterhood. We need to support each other, that’s what it’s about.”

Getting back to the state of British R&B, I ask her why that whenever a black woman achieves a high level of success, it always seems short-lived. Take last year’s Ms Dynamite backlash, what a fall from grace that was. Then there’s Beverley Knight who is immensely talented but never seems able to gather any career momentum. “In this country, we’re a minority, a very small percentage, and guitar music in this country is so dominant it’s ridiculous, you know what I mean? So for us to stand out we have to do something completely different for people to go ‘oh, that sounds interesting, let me kinda prick my ears up’. In a way, if it’s inoffensive, they like it, but when it’s too raw and too much to say, I think it frightens them a bit. Y’know, I’ve got something to say, Ms Dynamite’s got something to say, Beverley Knight’s always got something to say, so maybe it’s just too much outspokenness.”

I suggest that the problem with Ms Dynamite’s last album was that people thought she had too much to say and not enough tunes. “I dunno. I mean, you’ll see someone getting beaten up on the street and people will walk round and just leave it, instead of going ‘hey!’, because people don’t wanna be burdened.”

Then there’s the famous curse of the Mercury Music Prize... “Lucky I didn’t win it then! I like some of Dizzee Rascal’s music. Some of it’s a bit out there for me, but I’m a soul head so I’m rubbish with all that kinda stuff anyway. But, yeah, it was basically saying there were twelve great albums out that year, so to say I was one of them was just such an honour. Winning it would have obviously been great but, nah, I was never really worried about it. I was just like ‘woah! I’m performing at the Mercury Music Awards and Jools Holland is calling me on stage’... and I got one of those trophies!”

It seems to me that American artists seem to rely much more heavily on collaborations to make a name for themselves, so much so that they almost become a brand rather than a person, but Terri’s nonplussed: “In America, everything’s big, everything’s ‘oh my god’, so if you’re gonna do one thing, you’re gonna end up being an actress, a designer or owning a restaurant or owning these perfumes and stuff, and it’s great, but after a while it’s so much to deal with and you kinda lose focus, as you said, of what the artist is about. I like people like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott — they focus on what they’re good at, y’know? They don’t try and be this big massive entrepreneur. I think it’s better to focus on why people love you in the first place.” So we won’t be seeing a Terri Walker clothing line any time soon? “I don’t think so!” she laughs with mock indignance. “I haven’t got the patience. Seriously, I’d be like ‘I can’t be bothered, someone else do it!’... that’s me. I’m rubbish like that.”

Speaking of clothing, what’s Terri’s take on the everlasting debate over the hypersexualisation of women in R&B and hip hop music videos? “Oh my god. To me, when it first came out it was cool ‘cos, if you look back in the day with Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love, it was sexy but it was tasteful, and when the hip hop guys did it first, it was just something different. But now it’s just so boring and standard. I was watching this video the other day and it was just random shots of butt cheeks, tits hanging out and I’m like ‘who cares anymore, it’s so not sexy now’. Obviously, these girls decide to do it and if it’s their thing they should go for it, but at the same time I look at myself and think if that was my daughter, I’d be saying ‘why? you ain’t gonna get anywhere in a video shaking that booty’, y’know. It bores the hell out of me and I wouldn’t wanna be associated or seen in a video like that. Unless its done in a really tasteful way!”

I ask if she’s worried that it’s sending all the wrong messages to kids. “Definitely! For one, the urban scene is seen straightaway as kinda sleazy and kids think that’s the only way to become famous nowadays, by having no clothes on and looking a certain way. It’s not about being able to sing. I think it’s great having the Corinne Bailey Rae album out at the moment because it’s just about her being natural and riding a bicycle [in the Put Your Records On video], y’know? It’s natural. People go out and have a bicycle ride and hang out with their mates. Beautiful. And it went to number one, which is brilliant.”

Does she think it’s symptomatic of the fact that a lot of artists these days don’t feel that there’s a certain amount of responsibility that comes with being famous? “So glad you asked that actually, because I’m a complete old school freak. I love old school movies, anything with Bette Davis... people like her are my favourite actresses. I think people do forget they are role models. Take people like Pete Doherty. Kids see him getting arrested for drugs, drink driving or whatever. I think they do forget that they are people that kids, or anyone, even grown-ups, look up to.”

If she had just five minutes and the use of a time machine, Terri is quite clear about the advice that she would impart to her younger self. “Do not compromise who you are! I kind of did for the second album... so, yeah, don’t ever! Believe in yourself. I’ve always believed in myself, and that’s how I’ve managed to make this new album, which I really love. I mean, it was done quite quickly, but the next one, I’m definitely going to take more time with it and really craft it. A lot of the songs on I Am were written around the time of L.O.V.E., but just didn’t get used because they wanted it to be commercial. So now I’m kind of bursting to get the real me out there instead of the commercial Terri.”

The first peach of a single to drop from the tree of I Am will be Alright With Me, a song that she describes as her own version of My Funny Valentine. “All my girlfriends always say to me ‘you always go for the unconventional guys’. You know, they’re like ‘oh that man, he’s so this, he’s so that’ and I’m thinking how boring! I want someone whose got a bit more personality, a bit of quirk. So it’s basically saying I don’t care what they think, I love him, he makes me smile, he makes me laugh and feel great, and that’s what it’s about.”

Has she found true love then? She shakes her head, “I’m only 26, I’ve got loads of time. Have you?” I think so, I reply, it’s been nearly three years now. “Wow, that’s not bad going! How do you make it last though, I get bored so quickly!” I think the secret is to find someone who wants the same things out of life as you do, I say. She looks thoughtful for a moment... “how old are you anyway? Same as me? Oh my god, you don’t look it!” she laughs. “When you first came in I actually thought who is this kid, what kind of questions is he gonna ask me?”

I squirm in my seat, suitably embarrassed, quickly pointing out the latest in a growing procession of wrinkles. “Shut up!” she laughs. “Seriously, you could be a model. Take it from Terri Walker, I know these things!” Must be the light in here, I say. Besides, I’ve got horrible teeth. “Whatever! Anyway, you’re much too sweet to be a model.” Yeah? Just you wait, I warn her, you’ll get the new issue and your article will say ‘that Terri Walker, what an absolute bitch!’... not really of course, but a promise is a promise.

I Am is released in the UK on May 15th through Dekkor Records. The single, Alright With Me, is released on April 24th. Terri is on tour in the UK throughout April and May.