Craig David Biography

David's upbringing was disciplined but not restrictive, such that by the age of 14 he was given enough freedom to try his hand at MCing in nightclubs in his home town of Southampton. Recalling the events, David said, "One night, the crowd was dancing, but the DJ was just in the booth, doing his thing. I thought they needed some kind of connection, so I ran up there, picked up the mike and started talking. Just causing a bit of a vibe."

He caused enough of a vibe to be invited to host his own pirate radio show, a task which he took more seriously than most of his cohorts, writing out his running orders and spending hours in his room making up mixes beforehand, rather than the more traditional approach of turning up with a box of records and freestyling through it. He spent whatever money he had on new records and equipment, and began writing songs himself. A breakthrough of sorts came at the age of fifteen when, having been compelled to enter it by his mother Tina, he won a national song-writing competition, to write the B-side to Damage's cover of Eric Clapton's 'Wonderful Tonight'.

However, it was not until an encounter with fellow Sotonian Mark Hill that things really started to take off. Hill was the man behind The Artful Dodger (and I bet you thought that was Fagin...) and he and David got to work collaborating on their own blend of up-to-the-minute UK garage sounds and David's silky vocals. The resultant single, 'Re-Rewind' shot to number two in December 1999, just kept off the top spot by that pesky hoarder of UK Christmas number ones, Cliff Richard (whose Millennium Prayer bagged the top spot that year).

For all that the single may have provided easy meat for those who seek to mock - naming no names, Mr Francis - it was a major hit, and appeared to capture the zeitgeist (well, more than Cliff, surely). However, there was certainly a danger of David being pigeon-holed as the guy who sang that song. Defying this logic, the singer released an album's worth of his own material, and showed that he had the song-writing chops to match the early success - this was no flash-in-the-pan artist, but a genuine talent. His first solo single, 'Fill Me In', made him the youngest ever artist to write and perform a UK number one, and additionally it charted strongly in the US. It proved to be the first of four top ten singles from the album 'Born To Do It', also a transatlantic success, and critics were falling all over themselves to heap praise on the youngster.

However, having received six BRIT nominations in 2001, Craig did not win a single one - moving Elton John to throw a bona fide hissy fit at the judging panel live on TV, claiming 'If there is a better singer in England than Craig David, then I am Margaret Thatcher.' However, The MOBOs were rather kinder, giving him a hatful of awards in 2000 and 2001, backed up with an MTV award for best R&B act in 2001.

With 2002 album 'Slicker than Your Average', David looked to confirm that he had more strings to his bow than the 2 step/R&B styles with which he had become linked. Bizarrely for someone still in his early twenties and still at the dawn of his career, there also seemed to be a slightly jaded, more knowing and wary side to his writing, most marked in the lyrics to 'Rise & Fall' (on which Sting provided guest vocals, as it had also sampled his single 'Shape of My Heart'). David's own take on the pitfalls of an over-inflated pop star ego, it sounded as much a warning to himself not to lose it as a cautionary tale to others:
“I never used to be a troublemaker, Now I don't even wanna please the fans,
No autographs, No interviews, No pictures,
And less demands...”

In the UK at least, he was still managing amply to 'please the fans' - the album got into the top five, and with four top ten singles it didn't appear that his UK fanbase was in any danger of eroding. In the States the initial enthusiasm for the young Brit's take on soulful R&B had cooled, as none of the singles bothered the US chart, but at least over there Craig could set foot outdoors without someone bellowing his name in a broad 'prrrrrroper Bo' Yorkshire accent, as was starting to happen in the UK. The sending up of Craig David on 'Bo, Selecta!', for which Leigh Francis sought justification by saying that he thought the singer was just trying too hard to be cool, was beginning to make his life hellish, and was detracting drastically from the music.

Unsure of how to react publicly to the lampooning he was receiving every week on the Channel 4 programme, David eventually agreed to appear on the show itself - but in a vain effort to please, if anything he had sent himself up even more, and privately he was seething that this nutter in a rubber mask was on the verge of undoing all the hard work he had put into his career so far. In recent press interviews David has allowed himself to speak with far more candour about the whole series of events than he ever did while it was all happening, as shown by this quote from the Sun in November 2007: 'In hindsight, I think he's an idiot, a one-trick pony, an absolute prick. I hated the way he was so two-faced, saying sorry to me while milking the situation.'

The mockery had still not managed to undermine him, though - 2005's 'The Story Goes...' yielded two more top five UK singles, in the shape of 'All the Way' and 'Don't Love You No More (I'm Sorry)', and third single 'Unbelievable' reached the top twenty to boot. A 2007 collaboration with Kano, 'This Is The Girl', has served to improve his up-to-the-minute credibility, paving the way for the new solo single, 'Hot Stuff', which saw him backing the top ten again. And 2007 album, 'Trust Me', is so called because the singer who has so often been worried about how he comes across, and desperate to please, has found some inner confidence, sufficient to assert himself in studio and convince those around him (including his steely management team) to put their faith in him, and trust that he knows what he is doing.

• Craig David Discography