Craig David: ‘More than my wildest dreams started to happen’

Craig David celebrates 20 years in music with a UK arena tour. He spoke to DUNCAN SEAMAN about it.
Craig David. Picture: Phil SharpCraig David. Picture: Phil Sharp
Craig David. Picture: Phil Sharp

Craig David’s springtime tour of UK arenas is billed as a celebration of his 20 years in popular music. 

Back in the year 2000 when he released his first solo single a month before his 19th birthday, he says he really had no long-term plan for what he’d be doing two decades later. 

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“Everything happened so quickly from the point of releasing Rewind [his debut outing with UK garage duo Artful Dodger], then obviously Fill Me In and the album Born To Do It,” says the now 38-year-old singer. “I was literally living the dream, it was incredible. 

Craig David. Picture: Phil SharpCraig David. Picture: Phil Sharp
Craig David. Picture: Phil Sharp

“I think now with 20 years under my belt, looking back I wouldn’t want it to be any different to what it is. I just had such an incredible rollercoaster ride and I feel like the same kid that I was back in the day, just wanting to make some records and show people that I could sing. I have that same feeling, it’s wicked.” 

Being projected to sudden fame, as a multi-million selling artist, didn’t seem to faze the then wide-eyed teenager from Southampton. “More than my wildest dreams started to happen,” he says. “Creating that album and even at the time with Rewind, I was so embodying the music. Everything I did was for music, if I was making mixtapes or CDs and selling them to buy more hifi equipment or buy more music, the cycle kept going round and round and round within music, which I just loved.  

“You’re never really ready for where it’s going to take you but I think because I lived music, and it was not like a hobby, it was something that I relished every moment that I got to be on stage and perform again, to be in a different country and perform. All the due diligence that I did as a kid growing up, I was just having my moment now and confident every time I stepped on stage.” 

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The “one thing that was strange”, he says, was people treating him differently in his home city. “In some ways I have real fond memories of growing up in Southampton, it was an amazing city and I still have close ties, my mum and dad still live there and I go backwards and forwards all the time, but the change happened when I was walking up the high street that I used to walk most days if I was going to school or if I was going to hang out on a weekend and see friends.

“I noticed that something had changed when even friends that I knew well would talk to me in a slightly different way, as if they’d only met me for the first time. They’d seen me on TV now and they’re like, ‘Wow, can I get your autograph or a picture?’ I’m thinking, ‘Something is shifting’. It was beautiful but it was very strange for me, I was like, ‘This is a new experience’ and then my whole life changed off the back of that album.” 

Despite his newfound celebrity, David retained a sense of self, something he attributes to “growing up in a working class family and seeing how much my mum and my dad sacrificed for me to have the opportunity of having the hifi equipment that I wanted to record, and trying to make me feel that everything I needed to support my music they were there. My mum told me more recently that she was going into overdraft, she was really on the edge of trying to keep it all together.

“Knowing that innately inside of me, knowing how much they sacrificed for me, when I was having success financially things changed and my eyes were open and seeing the world, I just always remembered the hard times and understood this is amazing, I’m living my dream but don’t lose focus, stay grounded. I always felt that was part of my upbringing from my parents, they always kept me there but never stifled my dreams. ‘Keep your feet on the floor. You achieve everything you want, Craig, but stay grounded’ and I just embodied that, really, and it’s served me really well.”

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David had a run of hits for a decade but his fortunes dipped in 2009 when he released a covers album on Motown Records. “I think there was definitely a point around that same time as that covers album that as much as I always pour my heart into the studio, so when I was recording the songs I was really proud of them, I listened back and thought, ‘wow, there’s some really good songs on this album’, but also it felt like it was so far removed from the original music I was making like Fill Me In and Rewind. They were songs that really opened the floodgates culturally in the UK for other young artists to say, ‘This is some kid from Southampton and he’s releasing songs like Fill Me In and he’s just dropped 7 Days and Walking Away, it makes us feel, OK, we can do it here in the UK rather than it being as US import’.

“I guess for me at that time it felt like I was slightly reaching for something that was outside of me, as opposed to maybe taking a moment to go back in the studio, pull the faders down for a second, get more composed, get back into the spirit of what is it that I want to say in my music. Really as soon as I did that, you can then fast forward to the Following My Intuition album I did, it pretty much changed in 2016.”

In between David moved to Miami and took up body building, by his own admission a little too seriously for a while. His musical rehabilitation began when he returned to his DJ-ing roots with his TS5 parties. “There are some slight differences between Miami and Southampton but they are very much close to the water and I had my DJ set-up very much the same. I was DJ-ing on the South Coast when I grew up, now I was actually bringing the DJ-ing and house parties into my home.

“I think because it went back to basics and I started to do the simple things that I loved as a kid, I got so much satisfaction from throwing these house parties and as soon as I got back into alignment with what makes my heart fill up with joy the next thing you know this became the catalyst for it to become a radio show, coming back to London, and I started to do a few smaller shows and it built up a couple of thousand each time to Brixton Academy and that turned into us playing at Glastonbury to 100,000 people, doing what I was doing at my house parties, furthermore doing what I was doing in my bedroom in Southampton. It’s gone full circle and it just reminds me, do what you love and the simple things and the rest will all fall into place, don’t overcomplicate it.”

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David says he feels “so grateful every day for the people that championed me, the people who’ve supported me through the good and what you would call bad times, but I always try to reframe the situations when it seems like you’re pushing and it’s not falling into place, it’s just the universe saying, ‘Listen, you need to change up your direction, that’s not the path’.

“It’s always been down to really amazing fans and people, relationships that I’ve had along the way, that just always steered me to the right place, always cared for me no matter what. So when Following My Intuition went to number one and we announced an arena on the back of that album how grateful I was for everyone and what they did, and the feeling it gave me as much as everyone else hearing those songs, wow, how amazing is this?”

This year David released two singles, When You Know What Love Is and Do You Miss Me Much, but it seems we might be waiting some time for a full album of new material. “I’d love to have the album out, I know it makes sense because of the touring, but the model’s changed a little bit now,” he says. “I think the old model of having an album then going out and touring it has changed. Because of streaming you can drop the album whenever you want, it’s a lot quicker now, and I’ve also had to change the emotional attachment. The album used to have a very long life, you had to wait for a cycle of maybe a year for an album, tour the album then go with the next album. People are now ready a month later after you’ve dropped an album for your next album and I think if you loosen your attachment to what you used to think should be the way and accept that’s the way it is, it also means as a songwriter you can actually put this music out now, you don’t have to hold onto it on a hard drive for a year, it’s actually quite fun and liberating.”

Craig David plays at the First Direct Arena, Leeds on April 16. www.craigdavid.com

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