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Righteous brovaz

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Times

October 05, 2003

Righteous brovaz

By David James Smith

Shootings, murders and drug busts were once the soundtrack to their lives. Then Big Brovaz turned the tables and gave rap a good name.

On the forecourt outside the group's rented London house – £90 a week each – J-Rock's Lexus is parked next to Randy's silver BMW. The house is inside the new gated development opposite the old Tulse Hill estate, just up the hill from downtown Brixton.

Big Brovaz's success has given the group members some reasonable, if not yet through-the-roof earnings, which some of them have been out spending: J-Rock bought his Lexus only a few weeks ago, the same time Randy drove home with a new BMW from a dealership in Essex, which is the furthest he's travelled in it so far. The Lexus is green – money-green, J-Rock calls it. Later, his bandmate Dion (who is saving, not spending) asks me what I think of J-Rock's Lexus, then tells me what she thinks of it, which is not much. A Lexus! And not even a big Lexus. And that green! Ugly. Personally, I think it is a very nice car and I can see that J-Rock thinks the world of it.

Still, J-Rock complains mildly that the bass on his in-car sound system, which might sound deep and heavily vibrant to the casual listener, is not quite up to scratch. I say it sounds okay to me. No, man, says J-Rock, that might be all right for the residential areas but it's not good enough for the 'hood. He is going to take it to Randy's uncle, who will fix him up with some proper bass.

Jay Dee is hovering nearby. He is the manager, often hovering. He leans inside the car and points to the dashboard. He says, have you seen the flip-top satellite navigation system? J-Rock flips it up. He used it for the first time the other night, offering to run Nadia to her home in Reading, where she had left some items she needed for the next day. He had got lost several times en route, not being quite sure how to program the satellite system, having set it to go from Reading to Brixton instead of the other way round.

J-Rock had said he would find and play me the secret track on the Big Brovaz album, Nu-flow. He ejected the Jay-Z album from his car's CD player and inserted the Big Brovaz album; he scrolled through to the last track, then scrolled through the silent pause of several seconds at the end of the last track before the secret track began. The secret track had been secreted there at the end of the group's album, perhaps for reasons of credibility. Jay Dee, who was still hovering, said, you see, I told you, she sounds just like Julie Andrews. It was Cherise from Big Brovaz singing 'raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens' on an original version of The Sound of Music song My Favourite Things. And she did sound just a little like Julie Andrews.

The band had recorded their own version of My Favourite Things – 'buy me diamonds and rubies, I'm crazy 'bout Bentleys, Gucci dresses and drop-top Kompressors [a Mercedes convertible]' – for their album and it went to No 3 in the charts when released as a single earlier in the year. The estate of Rodgers & Hammerstein (the authors of the song) had originally refused permission for the band to recycle it, then granted permission, cannily, after asking Big Brovaz to agree to include an original version of the song on their CD too. Thus the estate was earning royalties on two tracks instead of one. The band's revenge had been to hide the track.

J-Rock had been outlining his history as an underground rapper. He was still in his early twenties but it was already a long history dating back to his early teens. Big Brovaz's sound was a mainstream fusion of rap and R&B, pretty much the acceptable face of rap: an alternative to the implied threat and aura of violence that had settled around So Solid Crew. Some people in Brixton would dismiss Big Brovaz as a sellout – 'jus' pop group'. The cultural gap between Julie Andrews and underground rap was beyond measure.

I asked J-Rock if he was embarrassed, having a Julie Andrews song on his CD. No, man, he had seen The Sound of Music many times, he said, hundreds of times. He liked it a lot. Then he switched CDs and played me some of the new music he had recorded during the group's recent holiday, which he and Randy and Flawless and Dion had mostly spent in the studio. 'Listen up, motherf***ers,' began the vocal on one of his new tracks, 'this is J-Rock here...' That was J-Rock, going back to his roots. He wondered how Sony would cope with being asked to release this material under the auspices of Big Brovaz.

Sony called Big Brovaz 'urban'. It was the new sound of pop, and 'urban' was already a pop clichι: it was urban music and its time was now. Jay Dee did not think he could have sold Big Brovaz to Sony a couple of years ago. Six black kids from Brixton? Forget it. They just wouldn't have been interested. Sony's vice-president of UK repertoire, Nick Raphael, begged to differ. He thought he might have signed them, simply because they were so talented. But even he agreed this was the moment for urban music.

What was urban music? Er, that was a difficult one. It was music of the streets such as hip hop, garage and R&B. Craig David and Ms Dynamite and So Solid (who, Big Brovaz readily agreed, had paved the way for their own success). Well, actually, 'urban' was the music of young black people and here were six of them, on a gated development in Brixton with three executive people-carriers parked outside, waiting to transport them and their entourage to their next assignment. Inside, the house was teeming with people: the manager, the photographer and the photographer's assistant, the press officer, the hairstylist, the dressers, the make-up artists, and me.

Big Brovaz had broken through and, with luck and ambition and the proper application of their talent, could still have a long way to go.

Jay Dee said it would be the first single of their second album that determined their future. They would begin work on the second album this autumn. The first album, Nu-flow, had been selling 25,000 a week at the time of the Favourite Things single. The album had now gone platinum, with sales in excess of 300,000. He hoped the new single, Baby Boy, which would be the fourth single taken from Nu-flow, would find an even wider audience because it was a ballad and even more socially acceptable. Meanwhile he was paying daily attention to the band's progress in the US.

"The single's on the playlist of the top 10 stations in America!" Jay Dee told me one morning. But then I asked him to show me some US sales figures and playlist feedbacks and he never did: "I'm getting them biked over now... They're on their way... I'll bring them with me for Friday..."

J-Rock (real name John-Paul Horsley), Randy (Michael Brown), Flawless (Temi Tayo Aisida), Dion Howell, Nadia Shepherd, Cherise Roberts. That was the group. Plus their producers: Skillz (Abdul Bello) and Fingaz (Michael Mugisha). Cherise was the youngest, at 20. Skillz was the oldest, at 26.

When Jay Dee, who was only 28, first met them about a year ago, Big Brovaz had been a collective of 13 or more people. Nobody seemed sure of the exact number. The collective had been started by Skillz and a friend whose name was Marlon, whom they all used to call Brando. Skillz, who was Nigerian-born, had wanted to harness the otherwise unnoticed talent of young black people. He wanted to be the big brother who would nurture and encourage their music. Skillz had been in a rap band of his own called Secret Weapon with a fellow rapper who called himself Bobbie Chess, because he thought of himself as complicated, like the board game. Bobbie had recently enjoyed some financial success and had changed his name to Bobbie Cheques.

Marlon was Randy's cousin (they were a family of Jamaican origin) and had a flat in Kennington with a big living room, big enough to be turned into a recording studio. Thus Marlon's flat (renamed Beat-Oven Studios – a wordplay on 'Beethoven') had become a focal point for all those joining the Big Brovaz collective. While still in their teens, Randy and his brother Chaz-d (his name is Derek) had met J-Rock at an 'open mike' night for young rappers at Oval House, also in Kennington. The three of them had formed Out 4 Just-iz, a rap band seeking justice for UK rappers who, it seemed to them, were always losing out to American rappers. Even the local radio stations neglected home-grown talent and played American rappers instead.

They had initially formed their own label, RAF (Rugged as F***) Records, and had taken promotional photos of themselves near Randy and Chaz-d's mum's home on the Myatts Field estate.

They had sprayed Out 4 Just-iz graffiti there too, but it had since been washed off. They had once signed a singles deal with a small label and gained a distribution deal with a bigger label. The night before their first single, Let's Do It, was due for release they had gone out across London fly-posting stickers promoting the single. Sadly, the deal had gone wrong at the last minute and the single had not been distributed after all.

Some months before they signed to Sony, Randy's brother had gone to prison. He still had nearly a year left to serve and Randy was unwilling to discuss with me the offence his brother had committed. It was his brother's business, he said.

Not long after this, early in 2002, Randy's other, older brother, Raphael, was diagnosed with stomach cancer at 26. Raphael had died that May, just as Big Brovaz were becoming known. Randy had stepped down from the band for a while, and been replaced briefly by Skillz, the producer. Skillz said his brother's death had turned Randy upside down. He had gone a little crazy, believing his brother's life had been sacrificed for his own success. Even now, Randy said, he didn't know whether to celebrate (his own success) or grieve (the loss of his brother Raphael).

Their rap band Out 4 Just-iz had fallen in with the original Big Brovaz collective, going daily to Marlon's flat to write and record music. Both Randy and J-Rock had briefly taken jobs – Randy told me he had been a photocopy engineer, but the job had involved next to no engineering and a lot of photocopying – and both had been sacked in similar circumstances, after taking unauthorised time off to go to a record-company meeting.

As a young man living in Brixton, J-Rock had got into a little trouble and known others who had been unable to avoid far greater trouble. His dedication notes on the Nu-flow album listed a string of names, including Raphael, of friends who had died or been killed. 'I'll see you at them Gates,' he had written, 'make sure they let me in.'

There was Donovan, who J-Rock said had been shot in Brixton while trying to rob someone; Ratings, who was shot while sitting in his car with his girlfriend, who had also been shot but survived – a drugs-related incident, J-Rock thought that was; Happy, an African friend who had died in a bike accident on his way home, and Dash, who had been shot outside a south London club.

He knew many victims of shootings and stabbings, he said, and the various incidents had all been since the turn of the millennium. People had cars and money and jewellery, and other people heard about it on the streets. There was a lot of jealousy on the streets, said J-Rock.

His own run-ins with the police had been nothing serious, he said, only little misdemeanours, and he had never been incarcerated or nothing like it. And even though he had been affiliated with the streets and stuff like that, he had never got deep into selling drugs, having guns or anything like that. He had grown up and out of it, had responsibilities to take on (a daughter). "I done totally changed my life around, I found something positive to focus on, with music I found something legitimate, somewhere I fitted in and everyone was proud of me for that."

J-Rock had been born in Washington, DC, where his father had been based as a diplomat for the Caribbean island of Barbados. His mother, who was Brazilian, was deeply religious and had named him John-Paul – after the pope.

J-Rock had moved to London when his father had been transferred to the Bajan mission here. He had not seen his mother for some years now. Randy's parents lived apart too: his mother in London and his father in the US.

Flawless had also not seen his mother for many years – she was back in Nigeria – and described a difficult upbringing with his father, who had been a church deacon, very strict and critical with his son, so much so that his son had felt nothing short of perfection would do, hence his stage name, Flawless – an ironic commentary on his father's parenting.

While he had been trying to succeed with music, Flawless's father had often told him he should get a proper job. Now he was a success, his father had taken to the rather embarrassing habit of getting friends and acquaintances to phone Flawless and ask him to sing down the phone to them to prove who he was. Out of respect and tradition, Flawless could never refuse, even though he found these calls excruciating.

Randy and J-Rock sometimes went to the local church around the corner from their home on Sunday mornings. But Flawless never went to church now. He preferred to pray on his own, he said. Flawless had also gravitated to Marlon's flat and fallen in with the inspiring enthusiasm of the creativity there. He became close, in friendship, to Dion, who was recommended to the collective by a friend and was welcomed by Skillz and Marlon.

Dion's Jamaican parents had also been churchy and strict, and she had grown up closely involved in a Pentecostal church in Charlton, southeast London, where her father was the pastor and her mother was also the mother of the church. Dion's parents believed you were only meant to sing about God or to God in his praise. Dion had secretly listened to Michael Jackson on the radio in her bedroom at home, but had sung hymns and gospels from childhood in the church.

Though she was sure her parents had not wanted to inhibit her happiness Dion knew they had struggled to come to terms with her achievements in Big Brovaz. The CDs – the album and singles – sat unwrapped on the side at their home and she readily admitted she could not have sat in the same room as them listening to Nu-flow, because it had the word 'sh**' in the lyrics. Nor could she be in the room when the videos were on TV and her young cousins unhelpfully teased her parents, oooh, look at Dion's tiny skirt, and so on. Dion had grown up wearing long, all-covering skirts and dresses for church and, as an athlete, had become used to tracksuit bottoms and trousers. She had decided to let the Big Brovaz designers dress her how they wanted.

Dion, you could tell, was organised and focused. She was the only one of the group who had not moved into the Big Brovaz house in Brixton when it had been rented on their behalf by their management. Dion already had her own rented flat in Woolwich. She had a car too. Not a green Lexus, you may be sure. She had worked for a while in the offices of an investment company. She knew what she wanted.

When the band arrived back at Sony one afternoon, after performing at a children's charity in Battersea Park, Dion flopped down in a chair in a boardroom and asked, airily, can someone get us some food? She wanted 20 nuggets and a large fries from McDonald's. Twenty nuggets? Yes, that was the order, and she ate nearly all of them.

We sat together in the vacant office of the VP of UK repertoire, Nick Raphael, who had signed the band. He had gone off to Harrods, he explained to us without irony, to add some more expensive items to his wedding list because his guests were complaining that there weren't enough expensive items on the list. Dion said she hoped for an invite to the wedding. Of course, said Nick. Dion and the others had recently been invited to a country party as guests of the owner of their management company, Jonathan Shalit. At least, Dion thought they had been invited as guests. It turned out they were scheduled to perform.

In Dion's absence from the Big Brovaz house, the remaining women, Nadia and Cherise, shared a room. Cherise often went home to her mother's in Shepherd's Bush, where she had been brought up, the mixed-race daughter of an Irish mother and Jamaican father. Nadia came from Reading, and actually had a husband in Reading, Johnny Stephenson, whom she had married earlier in the year. They had been together for about 18 months.

To tell the honest truth, said Nadia, the group comes first. She loved her husband dearly, but Big Brovaz was her career and this was what she had waited all her life to achieve. Nadia had been working in a Prudential office before Big Brovaz claimed her. It had been a simple job, a four-year-old could have done it, she said.

A friend of a friend had introduced her to the collective. She had grown up listening to Mariah Carey but had never imagined she might one day meet her on at least semi-equal terms, as a member of the group. Mariah had been really sweet and Nadia had felt good meeting her. Amazing things like that had been happening already, less than a year into the band being taken up by Sony. They had been signed up for the new Scooby Doo film, had spent a week in Vancouver filming brief appearances and recording two songs. They had been to Australia and New Zealand, on a brief and demanding tour.

It was after that the band insisted on a holiday. Nadia had taken her honeymoon in Jamaica (her family came mostly from Barbados; her father was from the small nearby island of Aruba). Nadia had no qualms about spending money on a honeymoon. A honeymoon and shopping, she said, were her aims and desires. She wanted to shop for sexy clothes. And maybe, down the line, she fancied one of those Mercedes Kompressors the band had sung about in My Favourite Things.

Her room-mate, Cherise, though the youngest band member, had also had the most extensive experience as a signed artist. Sadly, her contract with East West Records had gone wrong with the release of an album, Look Inside, early in 2002. Cherise had been signed after winning a Mobo (Music of Black Origin) Unsigned award in 2000 and was dropped after the release of the album. She had not wanted to continue singing at first, had barely wanted to step out the door, but had eventually rejoined the Big Brovaz collective.

Cherise had also been linked to a similar collective, Tribel, based in Shepherd's Bush. Tribel's founder, DJ Kieran Bobb, produced some records for her, but their collaboration ended when Bobb died in a shooting incident at Nando's restaurant in Shepherd's Bush. Cherise herself did not associate with people involved in gun crime, she said. She was strictly music.

The Big Brovaz collective, the 13 or 15 or 16 or however many it was, had been unwieldy, chaotic but exciting. They had performed all over the country. They had produced a compilation CD, Big Brovaz – Watchin' U, and had been excited when it sold 2,000 copies quickly on the streets of south London. They had sent copies to every industry contact they could think of, and Jay Dee had heard it and came calling. He had seen them on stage at Subterania in Ladbroke Grove and recalled it as one of the most disorganised and terrible gigs he had ever attended. Still, he had seen through it and heard their talent.

But, Jay Dee had told Skillz, he could not work with so many people. He told Skillz to pick the best six and Skillz knew exactly who they were, straight away. Fingaz had thought up their signature tune, Nu-flow, almost immediately after Jay Dee's interest. Later, when Jay Dee had asked for something that might really get noticed in the charts, Skillz came up with the idea of reworking My Favourite Things. Sony, as they might say, had come aboard within two weeks of Big Brovaz being signed up by Jay Dee. After all those years of plugging away, they were an overnight success.

The band did not want to concede that they had climbed on the backs of their fellow collective members to get ahead. If you asked them, they would say the other members had been less dedicated or had drifted away or become pregnant and started families. That was partly true, but others really had been left behind and there had been ill feeling, directed not at the band but mostly at Skillz, who had not picked them. Even now, some people were no longer speaking to Skillz, who had lost his friendship with Marlon and one or two others.

The band – especially the men – thought that it was better for some of them to break through and carry the rest with them, than for all of them to be sat back hoping for something to happen, with nothing happening.

It seemed important to Randy and J-Rock, particularly, not to lose sight of their origins, to leave the door open for the return of Randy's brother, when he was released, and the revival of Out 4 Just-iz. Though of course, that cause, the cause of UK rappers, would be less heartfelt now, now that they were big-time rappers themselves with their Lexuses and their BMWs and all.

(posted 7481 days ago)

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