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On a warm summer evening in central London, a lowly figure, me, tries his best to get a rather frustrated-looking bouncer with a clipboard to let him in to the ‘guest-list-only’ weekly hip-hop event at Bar Rumba, Shaftesbury Avenue.
I explained to him I was indeed on the guest list and was supposed to be interviewing the main act, Camilla, on her PA launch. Unaware of her, or apparently even the fact that anyone was performing tonight, he couldn’t let me in yet. That is until the resident MC, Scandal, was found to escort me down to the stage and DJ booth.
A live crowd, some rather provocative booty shakin’ and equally, er, sexual hip-hop and a few beers later and the people were ready to face the beginning of the new age of star. One without the assembly-line class of today’s charts, and a versatile talent so raw that, well, you couldn’t bite it if you tried.
New girl Camilla of North London wowed Julez Santana and the Dipset crew in the US so much with her demo, they didn’t just give her their blessing, they gave her their label.
Now flying the flag for UK hip-hop as the Official First Lady of Dipset, Camilla turns to her native crowd to showcase the forthcoming whirlwind.
As Scandal hushes the crowd, I look on excitedly from the DJ booth with Paul Silver, of Silver productions – one half of Camilla’s production team and Dipset’s most trusted aides this side of the Atlantic. The first single “Don’t Hold Back”, due to feature Erick Sermon, gets the crowd going with its jazzy breaks and live horns.
As it moves into some dark crunk-influenced R&B on “Oh What I Did” (due to feature Julez Santana) and “Got What You Need” my eyes are somewhat diverted once more to the repeat mass of booty shakin’, now ubiquitous through the club. A crowd cheer as the final track, a wonderfully bouncy and bassy reggae number – “Getting Mine” – drops with the added vocal talents of the sublime reggae star Wayne Wisdom.
The people are impressed, I am impressed, and by the smile on Camilla’s face, already having captivated a hungry crowd, so is she. She has a stage presence the calibre of which I have not witnessed before, and a uniquely humble attitude to match.
As I leave the launch set, I encounter my friend the-bouncer-with-the-clipboard once more.
He asked “Did you get what you needed, how was her set?”
“You’ll soon find out” I thought to myself. He didn’t know, yet...
I’m a singer song writer and an actress
Dial Tone and Silver my music producers were working on a mixtape with Juelz Santana and Lil Wayne in the Dipset studio in New Jersey, NY. I was there too, and Tone played Julez the demo of my album. He couldn’t believe it was me because he had never heard hard core R&B like this come from the UK. He told everyone and was like “this girl has something special”. He also respected and related to the fact that we are completely independent and doing so much, he saw the video for ‘Don’t Hold Back’, was feeling the whole vibe really and just said “you guys are doin your thing and I wanna help you”. I couldn’t believe it, it made me proud and has given me the self-belief to carry on even when things are tough.
Erick Sermon heard the track when it was getting mixed by super engineer Duro in NYC from Desert Storm Records, and was like “who’s this? The productions hard and the vocals slammin” and wanted to get on it, especially when he heard it was UK and independent. He also produced his own remix.
E’s remix is much more low key R&B, darker, less bvs, it’s tough.
Oh yes this single is like dark crunk. It’s a kick ass track about my girlfriend catching my boyfriend with another girl in a club on her videophone. It’s really hard core and has a dirty south vibe.
I love my tracks to be full of energy, fast or slow. The energy come from the vocals and the live instruments on the track. We love to make music that sounds like samples but isn’t, nothing can beat that live sound on really sexy hard beats. I think that the UK R&B scene is lacking a vibrant energy right now that I wanna rectify.
Daddy Cool is an urban musical with a Caribbean flavour about rap crews in London. Sunny and Rose (me) are from rival families but fall in love. It’s fantastic to work with such talented people and also be involved in a brand new musical that is so organic. It’s cool because we all have input. It has breakdancing, rap, soul and reggae in it as well as some old classics like Boney M’s “Sunny”, that Mark Ronson sampled with “Oh Wee”, my favourite song that I sing
Yes definitely, when I perform live or in the studio I have to re enact my thoughts and feelings in my songs as my songs are from true stories. There is always something very personal in my music that I have to revisit
I try. But I love to busy and love to create.
I wanted to capture energy of live instruments with sexy hard beats and modern programming with old school soul and hard core R&B. I did not wanna sell out and do pop R&B. I also had to have a reggae tune on the album
About 4 months, and 5 studios! We moved a lot!
I want to concentrate here first and I don’t know what to expect from the U.S., but I don’t think we are worlds apart we are the same and are competing on all the same levels
Always Earth Wind and Fire, Arethra and Donny Hathaway, also Lupe, Juelz and Damian Marley
JME, Biggs, Harvey – who’s also in my musical. And more I hope
The production speaks for itself, it’s the hottest shit to come out of the UK! On another level to anything out there right now. They do a lot of work Stateside too.
Lil Mo, Beyonce, Mia…
I just wanna get my album out there do loads of gigs, see what happens.
Just to all the talented youngers out there trying to do their thing, feeling despondent and confused by the UK scene, as I was. Keep your head up and carry on, I hope I can change stuff for a lot of people.
I got a Uni tour coming up in September, also a PA at Mash, Great Portland St, W1, on 29th July.
'Don't Hold Back' ft Erick Sermon is released on the 21st August on ACM/Dipset Eurasia. The video can be found all over the net, just google for camilla dipset....
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© ukhh.com 2006
Camilla Interview
Welcome Camilla, thank you for coming down…So for the good readers of UKHH.com, could you tell us briefly about yourself?
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