Tulisa - The Biography

by Newkey-Burden, Chas

  There is something almost moving about Tulisa’s claim that some of her misbehaviour as a teenager came not from an inherent nature of hers, but from the neighbourhood she grew up in and then out of a desire for protection from bullies. That said, she has to take responsibility for what she did and must not be allowed to spin herself entirely out of the blame for her actions. Plenty of youngsters have gone through bullying experiences as children but few of them turn to theft as a way out of it. While expressing sorrow to her victims, she also says she would not change anything else about her childhood. As far as Tulisa is concerned, everything she has been through has made her the person she is today. ‘There’s really nothing else for me to feel ashamed about,’ she said, during the same interview in which she expressed regret for the thefts. One senses that she is conflicted in her feelings: on the one hand she feels ‘deeply unhappy’ for some of what she did, and offers apologies to her victims; on the other hand she says that overall she has nothing to feel ashamed about.

  In time, she moved schools and enrolled at Quintin Kynaston, in Marlborough Hill, near Swiss Cottage. She arrived there a different Tulisa to the one that had last enrolled at a new school. This time, she was ready and on the lookout for trouble. Never again was she going to allow herself to be pushed around at school. Educationally, she has since written, ‘there was really no point me being there’ as she had no interest in learning. Only one teacher – called Miss Shield – had any influence on her. Indeed, Miss Shield had a big influence on her life. When Tulisa bunked off school she would find the teacher on her doorstep, encouraging her to return to school. It was Miss Shield who saw the beautiful gem inside the tough and ugly front that Tulisa felt forced to put up in life. Few other adults in her life managed that. Tulisa and Dappy have both spoken out about education, encouraging their fans to work at school. Indeed, Tulisa has even declared herself in favour of a return to more old-fashioned discipline in today’s schools. She believes that if teachers were once more allowed to give pupils a ‘cane or a wallop’ then society would benefit.

  The bullying she worked so hard to overcome had originally been dominated by suggestions and perceptions of her as a sexually active teenager. However, as we have seen, such perceptions were for a long while far wide of the mark. That ‘while’ ended when Tulisa first had sex with a boy when she was 14 years of age. Despite being two years below the age of consent when she lost her virginity, she now considers that she was in one sense a late, rather than early, starter. ‘I was about to turn 15,’ she told The Sunday Times, looking back on this rite of passage. ‘I was one of the lucky ones to keep my virginity for as long as I did.’ It seems that the hurried, precocious pace at which Tulisa lost her virginity was shared by most of those around her. ‘It’s the environment you’re from, it becomes normal,’ she said. ‘Everyone around me had lost it. We were too mature for our age. We were doing things we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t have been drinking or smoking weed. The first time I went to an over-21s night, I was 13 years old.’

  A sense of the circumstances of her first love-making can perhaps be gained by a statement she made much later in life, discussing the sexual politics of young people in the 21st century. It is a sharp, at times weary, analysis of how sexuality for young people has changed. ‘This generation is really effed up,’ she said, laying down her feeling from the start. ‘Chivalry’s gone because guys don’t have to wait for sex any more. There’s so much more booty available than in the old days, when you’d meet someone and settle down quickly. Now everyone has such high expectations. Everyone thinks they can do better, and girls are so desperate for a guy, they’ve had to fall into the routine. If you want a guy, you’ve got to shag him.’ The interviewer she was speaking to noted that she ended with a sigh. Could that sigh indicate that she was speaking of herself and her own experiences? Did she sometimes sleep with guys because she felt she had to, rather than just because she wanted to?

  Certainly, she had many negative experiences with guys before finding happiness. As if there was not enough pain for her at home and at school, she experienced more hardship when she began dating boys. She said that her first ‘proper boyfriend’ – who followed in the footsteps of a boy called Carlos who she had dated less seriously for 12 months – was violent and abusive towards her. He was a handsome, older man and at first Tulisa was delighted to have won his favour. She had lied about her age to impress him. She was so excited when she would get to stay overnight at his pad. The relationship became a living hell for her though. He routinely and openly cheated on her. He hurled degrading insults at Tulisa, too. He told her she was ugly and worthless. On occasions, he even locked her in the bathroom when he left the house, in an extreme instance of controlling behaviour. Astonishingly, though in a sense typically of Tulisa, later in life she was able to take an understanding look at this man who was so unpleasant to her. She knew he had suffered a ‘very tough upbringing’ himself and that he was a little lost and in need of help. While she regrets that it was her who faced the backlash of his issues, she understood what had prompted them. She even wrote that she was pleased he had subsequently found help and confronted many of his demons. It takes a mature and forgiving nature to be able to view him that way. That said, she too will have benefited from the serene view she was able to take of the issue.

  Back in the thick of it, though, it had been tough for her. The hurt took on a new dimension when the boyfriend broke off the relationship. Tulisa might have been relieved to have escaped the clutches of such an abusive figure. However, at the time she was just hurt and humiliated to watch him run off with another girl. She stopped eating and lost a stone-and-a-half in weight. She also became interested in witchcraft and Tarot cards, as her imagination became ever darker. She remembers trying an Ouija board, and becoming convinced she had ‘brought something bad out’, as well as believing that her at times ghastly dreams foreshadowed real-life tragedies. She was pulled from this darkness by the light of religion. In her dreams, Mother Mary spoke to her and assured Tulisa that she was watching over her. The female saint was not the only religious icon that ‘spoke’ to Tulisa in her sleep. Soon, Tulisa began to pray and soon felt the dark and negative energy lessen.

  Before she truly stepped into the light, her self-harming escalated and she then went a step further: by attempting suicide on two occasions. The first time she tore into her mother’s extensive medication collection and swallowed handfuls of all manner of pills. They quickly took hold of her and she began vomiting violently. It was fortunate her body rejected the lethal concoction of pills she had forced on it, otherwise she would probably have died there and then. Instead, she lived to cry another day. The second suicide attempt came soon afterwards as she battled the pain and humiliation of both the break-up and the relationship that preceded it. This time she moved from her usual self-harming to an all-out attack on her wrists. Quickly she lost her resolve to end her life and realised with panic what was at stake. She grabbed a towel and held it tightly against the cuts. As she sat there in tears, desperately trying to stop the flow of blood, she thanked her lucky stars that she had not torn into crucial veins. It had been a very lucky escape for her; a life-saving one. A single extra slash with the knife just a few millimetres away from those she had made might have ended her life in seconds.

  ‘I know it was a classic cry for help and I decided I had to take myself out of the environment I’d been living in,’ she said later, during an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘So I went to stay with my dad, who also lived in North London. My dad knew what I’d been going through but I’d always chosen to live with my mum. Despite everything, I wanted to be there for her.’ Turning to how she felt about her father’s physical absence, she was understanding in tone. ‘I know my dad felt terrible for what I’d been through but he got really emotional and admitted that he just couldn’t stand the constant ups and downs of [my mum’s] mood swings and the paranoia any more, which is why he left. Her mood swings were affecting him and ma
king him so depressed he was becoming a different person. I totally understood how it had driven him to the brink and I know that he’s sorry he left me to deal with it for all those years.’

  Tulisa had not only shocked her father with her suicide attempt – she had also shocked herself. This was something akin to a ‘rock-bottom’ for her. If her story were a movie script, at this stage Tulisa would have reached a full epiphany. She would immediately have embarked on a positive life, with all her negative behaviour consigned to the past. However, the rough and tumble of real life is rarely so neatly plotted. Instead, she embarked on 12 months of trying to make up for her bad experience with a succession of guys. She still craved real love from a man and was therefore easy prey for guys whose smooth talking was less than sincere. Tulisa was so keen for her buttons to be pressed and there was never any shortage of men happy to press them. They would say the right things about commitment and love, get what they wanted from her and disappear into the night. To paraphrase a song she would later sing with N-Dubz, it did not take much for her to believe every word of their sweet stories.

  It was not as if she even always enjoyed the sexual experiences themselves. She admits she would often cry afterwards. More than anything, Tulisa just wanted a cuddle and some kind words. For a while, the sex and subsequent desertion was a price worth paying for those moments of tenderness. Ultimately, the cycle became too painful and she was forced to take a clear-eyed look at what was happening. Soon, she would find a man who treated her more as she deserved to be treated. It would be a major turning point in her life. However, by this stage she had a new love in her life that any man would have to learn to share her attention and affection with. One that would bring her much excitement, joy and hope. A lover that would take her round the world and make her famous. Like many of her ancestors, Tulisa had fallen in love with music. She had also developed a taste for fame that she would spend the years ahead trying to quench. There were plenty more twists and turns to come in her life, but at this stage, Tulisa was finally on the up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In a sense, the band we now know as N-Dubz first got together in 1999, the fateful day when Dappy and Fazer approached Tulisa – who was then just 11 years of age – and asked her to come to a recording studio with them to put together a track. They had gained access to a recording studio thanks to the generous support of Dappy’s father Byron – who would become the very heartbeat of the band’s early years. He had bought a small recording studio in Dollis Hill, north-west London, acquiring it with the proceeds from his various musical ventures. He became keen to encourage his son Dappy and his friend Fazer to get involved with music. This was, initially, as much as anything to keep them out of trouble. Cynics might say that in Dappy’s case at least this was a failed mission. However, one cannot know how he might have strayed without music and the fame that eventually came with it. Indeed, in the light of some of his childhood experiences, the ever-controversial Dappy has risen to become little short of a shining beacon.

  Back in the day, Dappy and Fazer had already messed around in the studio and in their bedrooms at home by the time they approached Tulisa with their big idea. They were enjoying the sounds that were coming together but they had increasingly realised they needed something extra – proper vocals. Tulisa’s love of music and performance in general had been growing steadily for years. When she was 11 she appeared in a school production of Bugsy Malone. She had being given the role of the female lead, Tallulah, and duly sang the song ‘My Name Is Tallulah’. (In later years she would attempt an on-stage gag about this, by singing the ‘2011 version’ called ‘My Name Is Tulisa’. The young audiences did not always appreciate the joke.)

  Securing that part after her audition and then performing in the production itself gave her enormous confidence as a singer. She clashed with the singing teacher she was given at secondary school. ‘I remember hating those lessons because she made me sing like a choir girl,’ said Tulisa. ‘I just wanted to put some soul into it. She didn’t really like me!’ Many of her schoolmates did like Tulisa’s singing, though. ‘At break time people would just crowd around me and I would sit and sing songs people requested,’ she wrote. ‘It was just T singing time.’ During these times her confidence began to soar. ‘I truly believed in my heart of hearts that I would be the world’s biggest superstar,’ she said.

  So, along came Dappy and Fazer to ask Tulisa if she would fill their musical void. Her response? A walloping great ‘no’. She felt that she wanted to be a solo artist, not help them pursue their dream of forming a band. It was a rather abrupt and perfunctory rejection, by all accounts. Later, she acknowledged she had been ‘all snooty’ about it. That might have been that, as far as the chances of the trio ever becoming a band was concerned. The boys turned their attention instead to another girl they knew from school. They asked if she would lay down some vocals in the studio, and when she said yes that seemed to seal the deal. However, the singer didn’t work out and the boys enlisted Byron to have another crack at convincing Tulisa to join them. He offered Tulisa a £20 note to help convince her. Showing early signs of her confidence in negotiation, she turned it down. He then offered her a ‘pinky’ – a £50 note – and she finally agreed to join the boys in the studio.

  When she got there, she discovered a scene that was less musical and more comical. No wonder Dappy thought she seemed ‘aloof’. Fazer and Dappy were playing, as best they could, various instruments including the keyboard. They also twiddled with some of the production buttons that adorned the studio equipment. Their knowledge and ability might not have been sky-high but they were full of passion and enthusiasm. She hoped these qualities would win out, and she was willing to give it a go. She had nothing to lose, after all. Though her first attempts at vocals sounded a little nasal and ‘childish’ to Dappy, she quickly began to improve. Eventually, after a period in which ‘trial and error’ sprang easily to mind, they had a rough recording of their first track, which the two boys had been working on. Donna Dee, a music producer who worked with them in the early days, said they created the song ‘in a matter of days’. Its title was ‘What Is This World Coming To?’ A strange choice of title for a teenage urban track, perhaps. It reads more as the headline of a despairing Daily Mail leader comment than that of a youthful, urban pop song. Dappy, looking back, said he was ‘embarrassed to even say that name’. (It had originally been called ‘What Is The World Coming To, We Don’t Give A Fuck’.) It didn’t matter, though – they had their first song, and they had taken a small but mighty step towards the stardom that would come their way in years ahead. For now, Tulisa said that the song was a little silly, and were it to surface publicly now, people would ‘crack up’. Let’s hope it does, then.

  However, she added, ‘I was an 11-year-old with a song – no matter how crap it was!’ With a song to their name, the trio decided to give their act a name. Tulisa’s suggestion for the band name was Boom Crew. Dappy was not convinced: in fact, Tulisa recalls him ‘pissing himself’ laughing at her suggestion, which she now concedes was ‘corny’. Again, it sounds more like the name a middle-aged man would imagine for an urban act, rather than one that kids themselves would dream up. Instead, they came up with a better one. They reasoned that despite being young, they had ‘rinsed it’ in the studio. Therefore, they came-up with the name Likkle Rinsers Crew. With a song and a band name created, it was official – Tulisa was in a band! They looked to the future. Naturally, given the nature of the three personalities involved, the focus was not always keen. The three would muck about and Fazer even remembers Tulisa scrapping with some of his friends. At first, the ratio of horseplay to actual music work was close to evenly split. However, as time went on Tulisa and her band-mates became increasingly serious about the music. They still mucked about a bit, naturally. Still do to this day, in fact. The personalities involved make that an inevitability.

  Soon, as the band developed, each member took on their own place within the collective. Dappy,
as his personality would inevitably dictate, became the focal point of attention and the de facto frontman. He is a young man born for the limelight, a kind of urban combination of Robbie Williams and Johnny Rotten, with a perhaps unintentional dash of Ali G thrown in for good measure. Fazer was described by Tulisa as more like the American rapper and producer Timbaland – a mellow, more retiring yet no less significant figure. He enjoyed playing with guitars and pianos in the early days, and sometimes threw some body-popping moves around. But what of Tulisa? She describes herself as a combination of the natures of her two male band-mates. At times she is as much of an attention-junkie as Dappy, yet she can also be the shyer figure like Fazer. The different characters appeal to different fans. Indeed, Fazer has said that the band is not unlike the Spice Girls – we all have our favourite member. She is also a maternal figure within the band and admits that she sometimes feels she is not just managing their careers but their lives in general. Not that she is a saint. ‘I always tell T that there’s more work to do,’ said Dappy. ‘She sometimes goes on like we’ve done enough and can have a little break.’

  Luckily, they had a real-life guardian angel looking over them in the early days, to point them back in the right direction. Always overseeing them was their mentor Byron, or ‘B’ as they took to calling him. If anyone wanted an example of someone who mentored young musicians with attention, wisdom and love, then they could not have done better than watching B work with the three youngsters. Fazer believed that it was B’s disappointment at not fully realising his own musical dreams that drove him to work so carefully and supportively with them. Indeed, B’s mentor role went beyond musical matters. He offered them advice and wisdom for their lives in general. Often, it was only later that they realised just how useful and true his tips and thoughts had been. For instance, he warned Fazer that ‘vampires’ would attach themselves to him once he became famous. This was not just a warning – he also taught the youngster how to recognise such predatory and fake individuals before they got a grip on him.