The Mercury-nominated On a Mission turned Katy B in to a dubstep star. But to record her followup album, she has gone back to former pirate radio station Rinse FM where she first made her name singing hooks on grime tracks
It's sweltering, so Katy B is barefoot in dungarees and a fluorescent strap-top, the BCG scar on her left arm blotching slightly, the way they do in the heat. "Oh, hiya!" she yelps, spreadeagled across a sofa as I poke my head round the door of her studio at Rinse FM in east London. "It's hot, right? I've been in here for so long, I keep trying to go out to the park behind the studio but it's just full of crackheads. I just have to sit there watching them do their deals and stuff."
Katy has got to know this room well. Her Mercury-nominated debut record On a Mission was recorded here, as was last year's Danger EP, which featured turns from Wiley, Jessie Ware and Diplo. On the wall are Blu-Tacked bits of sugar paper with track listings and lyrics, bits scribbled out and arrows drawn across the page as the final touches to her second album are made. She's been here from eight in the morning until gone midnight for the past couple of weeks, "but I'm not like a slave – I get breaks for Nando's and Facebook".
The studio below keeps even longer hours than Katy's. Right now, DJ Julie is presenting her Rinse drivetime show. After, Magnetic Man's Artwork and dubstep originator Youngsta will take their slots on the airwaves. Rinse, a former pirate radio station, has been credited with incubating grime, dubstep, UK Funky and the UK house revival, as well as launching the careers of Wiley, Dizzee Rascal and Skream. The station's boss, Geeneus, is also Katy's musical director and producer-in-chief. On a Mission was initially going to be a Rinse mixtape, with the station's name in a larger font than hers.
But that was more than two years ago, and you might have thought that after all her success – it was only last week that she was rubbing bums with Russell Crowe on Graham Norton's couch, for example – the 24-year-old would have abandoned her pirate beginnings.
"I definitely think this is still a Rinse record," she says. "I've worked with Geeneus all along the way and it feels like it's half of his creation. It's kind of like I am in a band with Rinse. You never know, in the future, it might go somewhere else, I might get pregnant and make a country album, but right now this is Katy vs Rinse."
Katy's relationship with the station stretches back to her teens, when she would come in to do live vocals for Geeneus or sing the hooks on grime tracks. Her enthusiasm for music meant that she would do anything to get involved. "I even did work experience at a sheet music shop, just so I could organise the scores."
Then at night, she would go out.
"I doctored my passport to get into a drum'n'bass night once, like the worst job ever. But back then a photocopied passport could get you in anywhere. I remember getting quizzed about my star sign and how old I was and I knew all the answers off the cuff."
Katy was brought up up in a liberal family in Peckham, south London, and her parents turned a blind eye to her slinking off to clubs in the middle of the night, just pleased to see her getting involved in music. "They weren't incense-burning hippies, but I do think they're quite hippyish in their morals. My mum's very caring and she recycles and listens to Cat Stevens. She'll go out to walk our dog in odd shoes and stuff. I think she would have been a hippy if she'd known where to get tie-dye T-shirts."
By the time she was 17, Katy didn't need her fake photocopied passport: DJs and producers started taking her to clubs for PAs. "But I'd just stand there in the DJ booth or backstage, thinking how boring it was. I just wanted to dance." Her boyfriend at the time took her to FWD>>, the club night that spawned dubstep. "But he wouldn't dance either. I'd just be there on my own, when the doors opened at 10pm, dancing on my own."
Katy still goes raving all the time. When we talk about nights out she has had recently, she deftly pinpoints the subtle changes in club culture and dance music that have taken place in the past few months.
"A lot of the guys who used to go to funky raves are all into house shuffling now. That scene's got quite sexy again. People get dressed up and wear heels. But the dubstep thing has gone back to being proper heads and not one girl in the whole thing. I went to a dubstep thing the other night and had so many boys coming to chat me and my friend up. They were going," – she puts on her best laddy accent – "'You can have the pick of the fellas in here, luv.'"
It's this knowledge of underground culture, not just the beats and the producers but what goes on in the smoking area at 4am, that made On a Mission such an exhilarating listen. Instead of generic lyrics aimed at geeing-up imagined crowds, Katy wrote from inside the breathless moments of a night out: the brushed bare shoulder and spurned advances that actually describe a clubbing experience – things DJs never experience from behind the booth. That was extended to last year's Danger EP – a four-track cartridge of guest vocalists (Iggy Azalea, Wiley, Jessie Ware), A-list production credits (Diplo, Jacques Greene) and one-act stories about a breakup, a one-night stand, a man-stealing nightclub seductress, and going out on the lash on payday.
"But I think a lot of that's changed with the new record. On a Mission was about being free and having no responsibilities, living life inside these moments. I've grown up a lot since then. I've been finding a way to stand on my own feet. I can't go out on the weekend and have my mum do the washing any more."
The first thing you notice about the new Katy songs (and, as the album's yet to be finished, I've only heard five songs, including current single What Love is Made of) is that they're quite sexy. Some of the more heavy-hitting dubstep production has been replaced by softer, neo-soul sounding synthesisers. While her debut was full of the nods and winks of club flirting, songs such as Tumbling Down and Sapphire Blue are a little more carnal.
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"There is love and sex and passion and jealousy on this record, for sure. I had relationships that meant a lot to me when I was writing On a Mission, but with this album, I've had another relationship and that has been … realer. Life is less of a fantasy."
But not everything about growing up means love and stability. 5AM, perhaps Katy's best track to date, is set in a similar scenario to her biggest hit Lights On, the moment when the music's over but you want to keep going. Except this time, a little older and less energetic, Katy's not sure what she wants. It takes place across a beat that Katy describes as "uncomfortable, something I like but I shouldn't", with the lyrics written from the tipping point when ecstasy turns to insecurity and you're helplessly overpowered by the voice in your head. "I need somebody to calm me down/ A little loving like Valium/ I need somebody to knock me out." It's a song that anyone who has ever been overwhelmed at sunrise by the simultaneous impulses to snog someone, run away from them, keep dancing and have a little sit down, will sympathise with.
For now Katy is keeping her feet moving but staying close to her family at Rinse. In between talking about music she tells stories where she is always made to look the slightly overkeen mug: having to disguise herself so she wouldn't get mobbed when she was raving in Miami; showing up at a big dinner organised by Nike and supposedly attended by Rizzle Kicks and Benga, to discover she was the only one there. She has all the makings of a DJ. Has she never thought about a show on Rinse?
"Yes! I still can't believe they haven't given me a show. I've begged Gee to have a slot for so long. I told him I don't even care, I'll do it at 3am when no one is listening. Whatever. He keeps being like: 'We've gotta move stuff around, the time's not right.' Then when he finally said he'd sorted something, I was too busy with the album. I'd love to do a TV show though, with guests and musicians and stuff. I'd love to be the new Jools Holland, but you know, for like cooler people."
What Love is Made of is out now. The new album is released in the autumn
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