“I just wanted to step outside reality a little bit, to help me along, really, because it’s a bit of escapism: that’s how I like to write my songs because if you think about the mundane things in life, you’re not going to get anywhere” Charming and witty company, Betty Boo is telling me how she wrote some of her biggest hits, and how she created a memorable pop persona that’s still imprinted on people’s minds decades on. “It was just create your own world and try and just go with the flow and just seeing where it goes, to escape the humdrum. Yeah, to look at the pile of laundry and just think, oh, that can wait!” She explains.
Returning two years after her comeback album Boomerang, chiming with messages of female empowerment from one of the original faces of GRRRl power, her sophisticated new album Rip Up The Rulebook looks set to soundtrack countless nights out (and the inevitable lost days that follow them). It was recorded at Betty Boo’s house and at Qube West, London where it was also mixed. It was produced by Andy Wright, Gavin Goldberg and Betty Boo, it plugs into her work of the 80s and 90s she was renowned for, yet updates them with today’s r&b, hip hop and pop sounds. “I loved making Boomerang so much that I kept writing. I’m very proud of these songs and grateful to be back creating music full-time. The album title Rip Up The Rulebook is my response to stereotypical ideas about what women should be doing in their fifties. I have never had so much fun making music (with my friends Andy Wright and Gavin Goldberg). Long may it continue.”
“I just want to make positive music. I want anybody who is listening to feel good and inspired, a bit cheeky.” She continues “Like if they’re driving the car, they can sing along and rap along to something. I know I would say it: but it’s the best one I’ve ever done.”
Betty Boo also known as Alison Moira Clarkson formed the rap crew the She Rockers in late 80s with Donna ‘She Roc’ McConnell, Antonia ‘MC Aurra’ Jolly, Dupe Fagbes, releasing self-produced music, before after a legendary chance meeting at Mcdonalds led to them ending up on tour supporting Public Enemy across the States when she should still have been in school. This was several years before her mega-hit singles in the early ’90s. “I’d say that being in an underground rap crew and working with Public Enemy was like my apprenticeship. That’s how I justified it to my mum, anyway!” She laughs. Before explaining what it was like to tour the States with Public Enemy.“I don’t think anyone was there to see us, but it was a great experience, and they really supported us and at the time, they really wanted female rappers to be heard and to be seen. And, you know, they were really big supporters of female rap. I’m in contact with Chuck D all the time. In fact, on my last record, he was a featured artist.”
Making her first chart splash as a featured artist on the Beatmasters excellent house meets hip hop hit ‘Hey DJ /I Can’t Dance (To That Music You’re Playing)‘ reaching number 7 in the UK chart in 1989. “I was in a group called the She Rockers, and I already had a reputation and the scene, that I was a rapper and they were looking for a female to appear on this record that they’d already had kind of made, but they needed raps on there. ” She tells me “It was like a hip house version of ‘Hey, DJ, I can’t dance’ which is a Motown song, so they made a hit house version.”
“They’d already had successes, already with the Cookie Crew and a guy called MC Merlin. And basically they’d heard about me, and I asked if I would go down to the studio and see them in Shoreditch. It was a studio called the Strong room. I knew Merlin and he said, Yeah, get the record company to get you a taxi. They’ll get you a cab. I phoned them up and said ‘Will you get me a cab? And they said, No, take the train to Old Street.’ So I had to jump on the tube, and I went there, and I listened to a track. I loved it. It was brilliant.” She reminisces.” All the Beatmasters were there. I said, so what have you got? So I rapped my raps. I asked them to take all the music out because all I wanted to do was rap over beats. I did one take, and that was the take that was used on the record.”
Back in the 1980s and 1990s Top of the Pops was appointment television on a Thursday, it was what everyone was talking about the next day at school or work. I wondered what Boo’s best memories of the show were? “My first one, so that’s got to be really special, yeah? And the fact that I only lived around the corner because I lived in Shepherds Bush. I grew up there ” She remembers fondly. “BBC Television Center was literally around the corner, a five-minute walk, so to be able to go into that building that I’d grown up looking at and thinking, what’s in there? And, you know, they used to film Blue Peter in there as well, which is also fascinating. That was probably my favourite one. But throughout the years, it was great, you would think that you would meet all the other artists that are on that show. But I didn’t meet anybody really, apart from Jason Donovan! ” She explains excitedly “he was walking past and me and the Boos were so starstruck because he was like the most famous pop star at that time! There were girls screaming outside in the street and he passed our dressing room and he came in and we had a picture taken. I might have posted it on my Instagram a few years ago. But that was a good one that was memorable, yeah?”
“In those days, you know, you weren’t even allowed to use your own makeup artists and stuff, So what I used to smuggle my hairdresser and my makeup artist in” She smiles “because I just thought that they were used to doing news readers, they weren’t going to get this sort of spacey look . So it was good fun.”
Betty Boo was a vivid persona but also a musical palette collecting different sounds from hip-hop and hooky pop melodies to samples from dance-hall and classic records. Yet it was all stamped with Betty Boo’s infectious and empowering personality. As she struck out on her own for her first album Boomania in 1990, she took in many different influences to add to her unique pop potion. “I loved different sorts of music. I was in the car the other day, and I thought for some reason. I really loved Dire Straits at 14, and I thought this isn’t normal. People just thought I was into hip-hop music, but I love Phil Collins, and I loved that as much as I love soul music. I loved all sorts, I just loved pop!” She enthuses.
” I probably thought all the kind of albums that I’ve liked in the past, the ones that I have got, they’re quite diverse, and I was obsessed with PWL as well. I just thought much as they were sort of fizzing. Their sound was tired by the time I came out but their songs were amazing, fantastic songs. So I just, I suppose, deep down, I wanted to just write what was coming naturally to me and what I was influenced by at that time.”
She continues: “Also I was kind of governed by the sort of records I had at home, because I was doing a lot of listening to records and sampling and just playing around with sounds and I’d say that, you know what? Also, what I really loved was sampling to get textures, yeah, into my songs. So they were like a soundscape as well, because that was so that was so impressive for me.”
“What I loved when I first heard Public Enemy, is that, it wasn’t like any other music I’d ever heard in my life, but it was how they use technology with sampling and everything. And I think I just wanted to try and put that into what I was doing.“
Emerging with her brilliant debut album Boomania! in 1990, as well as brimming with musical talent and inventiveness, Betty Boo had a vibrant dress-up box image, named after Betty Boop(only dropping the p) the cartoon character. She had her own defined bob hairdo, striking makeup and dress-up look, she represented a sense of fun, escapism and self-empowerment for many young girls and many others besides.
“I had a persona, and it helped me perform if I’m honest with you because it helped me, it was a mask, to hide behind clothes, the silver clothes and being Spacey.” She chuckles. “I just had an idea what I wanted to be and what the image wanted, being cartoony meant you could be something else or someone else as well, and it really worked for me.I really loved sci-fi and The Jetsons, Lost In Space and things like that, it’s that kind of feeling that you’re somewhere else and you don’t feel the nerves when you’re doing that. It’s a bit like acting, But it was also really good fun to be able to dress up, as we had our own dressing-up box, me and the Booettes. I don’t have a sister, but they were like sisters to me, and we because we looked the same, and we’re basically, we’re Eurasian, so I am Scottish, half Malaysian, yeah. And they’re half English, half Singaporean. Basically, Malaysia was one the same country once, you know, it’s all the same.”
One of her most memorable hits ‘Doin’ The Doo’ reaching the top of ten of the charts in multiple countries, is full of bouncing beats, vibrant samples and ridiculously catchy hooks, laced with Boo’s magnetic and empowered flow. “‘Doin’ the Do’ means that you’re doing your own thing and not letting anyone get in your way because, when I was at school, I was bullied quite a bit,” Boo explains the meaning behind one of her biggest songs.
“Also, growing up in the 80s, as a teenager, during Thatcher’s time, you know, there were no opportunities if you went to a comprehensive school, and the teachers weren’t happy because they weren’t being paid properly. So they were on strike” She remembers “They had no passion for their their job, or the pupils they were teaching. So really, they were just saying, ah, you know, just stay in your box, really. Go to college, get a job and become a secretary. Which is fine, it’s lovely. I mean, my mum was a secretary, and lots of my mum friends mums were, and it’s a good job, you know, but I didn’t. I really wanted to do something else.”
“I never wanted to be famous. I just wanted to be in control of my own life and that’s what doin’ the do is.” She confides “It’s going against the grain and not really listening to people putting you down and saying that you can’t do it. So doin’ the do means that you’re going to go out there and do it.”
“I’ve been getting so many messages from people on my social media saying how they felt inspired when, when doing the do came out because basically, and together with the video, there was this sort of feeling that I was breaking out and doing my own thing.”
“I get messages from people saying, god that was such an inspiration because I felt like I wasn’t being seen or heard” She explains how her music and look were a source of inspiration to many “It’s a coming out song as well, like with lot of gay people that were saying, I don’t feel like I belong but, somehow listening to this record makes me feel that I can just get dressed up and do I want to do.“
“A very well-known hairdresser told me that he so wanted to be like me. He cut his hair into a Bob, and actually went and made his own clothes, like spacey clothes, so he could get into that zone. So it’s really lovely to know, people really do share their memories of what it felt like when they heard that song, and what they felt like!” She tells me “I’m really surprised, because that’s the big and really good, positive thing with social media! I could have got letters written to me, you know, sent to my record label, and I would never have read them, because record companies didn’t keep letters, basically, frankly, you know, they were terrible. So to get these messages so many years later, it’s so lovely. It means the world actually”
‘Where Are You Baby?’ was a hit for Boo in the summer of 1990, another insanely catchy song, bouncing with pianos, chiming guitars and beats, it turns it out was inspired by the 60s, her use of sampling and looping providing a platform for another refreshing and memorable pop earworm that tries to reclaim the good times, ‘That was a breakbeat from a Monkees record, Run DMC had already looped it on ‘Mary Mary’ and I loved that so at first I looped it off the Run DMC record then I got the original and used that. I was obsessed with the ‘60s sound, I loved vibraphones and I really loved the ‘Rubber Soul’ album by the Beatles, I loved the sounds on those records and I thought I’ve got to pull that into a rap record.”
Releasing GRRR! It’s Betty Boo in 1992 through WEA Records despite containing the hit ‘Let Me Take You There’, the album failed to reach the commercial heights of its predecessor and Boo disappeared from public view. Taking more of a backstage songwriter role with the likes of Girls Aloud, Hearsay and many others. Only to return in full effect with her solo work again with the album Boomerang in 2022.
Her new album’s title track ‘Rip Up The Rulebook’ finds Boo tapping into old school rhyming and piecing it with a arms aloft pop chorus, she is duetting with one of the scene’s true originators, Grandmaster Caz – the author of the lyrics to ‘Rapper’s Delight‘ (and star of the 2012 film Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap which was Executive produced by BB’s alter-ego, Alison Clarkson). “I was an executive producer on the film called The Art of Rap, which was directed Ice T and produced by my husband.” She recalls “So I managed to put my husband, in touch with Ice T and his manager, and we made this movie and I interviewed loads of the big names, and he went back to the OGS as well. It was a physical film that was at the Sundance Film Festival.”
“It was brilliant and it was great to see all the all my heroes, and managed to get go around Dr Dre‘s house and all sorts of things. It was brilliant.”
“You’ll probably find some footage of Will Smith from a couple of months ago, he was in the same building as him in Sirius FM in America, because Caz has got his own radio show. He had to go and see him and he said: ‘I owe everything to you and he got on his knees. He said, ‘I’m not worthy’ So he’s a god. He’s a Rap God, he’s one of the originals. We owe our lives to him and everything he brought it all.”
The recent single ‘One Day’ is a punchy urgent reclamation of power, stability and empowerment, she taps into the sound of her 80s and 90s commercial peak and the soul, hip hop and pop of the present day, for a kicking and catchy track. It may be uplifting but it’s also a song tinged with a kind of sadness informed by grief. “So, I lost touch with somebody that was really kind to me once and a long, long time ago, and I thought about them. I’ve thought about them quite a lot, thinking, I wonder where they are? Or if they changed their name or and I just thought it’s such a nice idea to think that you might just bump into somebody that you once knew” She explains “because not everyone’s on social media, you know, especially my generation, some people just just go, No, I’m not. I’m not going anywhere near it, because they don’t want to be in touch with people, but so that is, that’s the concept of it.”
“It’s like one day we might see each other also, I lost both my parents when I was young, and when I lost them, especially my dad when I was 17. Grief is really tough, it is for everybody, but I don’t know about anyone else, but sometimes you can be walking down the street and you see that, you see them, and you have to take two, you have to go, no it’s not them, it really sounds mad, but I think that’s part of the grief process that you might see somebody that you once loved and cared for.”
“So it’s a little bit of that as well. In that song,” She explains “it’s kind of sad, but it’s, it’s not really, because it’s, it means that you’re going to be there. If there’s, you know, it’s kind of a happy, sad song!”
Previous single ‘It Was Beautiful’ featuring Glaswegian DnB producer Hex. “He’s an artist in his own right. I really rate him. But in fact, he’s the nephew of my co-writer and co-producer Andy Wright. He was just coming into the studio, and Andy and I had written this song already, and Andy was singing the parts that are on there, the first bit, the verse and everything. We just thought it’d be good to have a collab on there, his nephew was in the studio, and he said he liked it. So he did his bit, and he did his little bit as well on the verses.” She details. “It’s really got his personality on there, and I really like it, and it’s very different to anything that I’ve done in the past and again, I don’t want to just keep making the same sort of record. I like the idea of just trying out new things and, and I’ve done that in the past, this sound. It’s a very contemporary-sounding record.”
Rip Up The Rulebook finds the Boo continues the songwriting roll that began during lockdown, saw the release of 2022’s Boomerang – the first new Boo music since 1992 – and hasn’t stopped yet.
“Yeah, it was a big deal to come back, actually, because I kept putting it off, and it was the sort of the five-oh, and I thought, hang on a minute. How did that happen?” She asks. “I hadn’t done the things that I wanted to do. You need to get a move on. And then lockdown happened, and it was probably a good excuse for me to just get my head down and really think about and tap into being an artist again because it sounds pretentious, but it’s not. it’s a frame of mind. I had to revisit, what do I want to say? How are you feeling right now? You know you are different to that 19 or 20-year-old, all those years ago, can you still cut it? All these questions I asked myself, and I just thought, all you gotta do is turn up! That’s what I did, turned up at my laptop and started with just experimenting.”
“But that’s the good thing about having your own studios, that I was able to record my stuff over and over again, change things and I would audition myself, so I’d listen back, or bounce it down and then put it on in the car and play, listen to it and think, does that sit properly? And if it did, it stayed.” She enthuses about the democratising process of home recording.
“So it’s that sort of process of being able to record yourself and just play around with things. It’s just key to being to just go further with work. So, I’m lucky that technically, I know what to do with editing vocals and recording, and I just do everything on my laptop on Logic Pro X, and I’ve got this tiny little keyboard, but it serves me well. There’s all sorts of software you can use, all at your fingertips. I mean, you can use the phone, there’s so many, so many apps these days, you can do it!”
” I don’t have to go through executives or anything like that to release a song now, which I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.” She laughs “Be signed to a record label? Seriously, no way, jose!“
“Look at Raye She was treated like shit by a record label and she turned it around big time. I love it. I love her.” She lights up “That is a good thing about this era of music, in a way. You can do that. You can use your Instagram, TikTok or whatever, and just have that reach if you really want it, you know. But it’s that’s, it’s so good that kids can just, and anybody can just put their stuff out there and, and if it captures the imaginations of someone, you know, it’s great!”
Following the release of Rip Up The Rulebook, Betty Boo will release deluxe editions of her first two albums. Boomania and GRRR! It’s Betty Boo are due for release in time for Christmas, alongside more UK live dates.
