When Betty Boo first marauded the UK pop charts in 1990, the Nintendo Gameboy had just hit the shelves, Gary Lineker was the top goalscorer in the old English First Division and Margaret Thatcher was still in power. It was a very different time indeed.
Some 35 years on, Betty’s music and image – that of kitsch, space-age, hip-hop superhero – have stood the test of time incredibly well.
“I’m 55 now. Back in the day, if you signed to a record label, you were basically over the hill at 25, which is mad. It’s something the record labels invented. But you can make music whenever you want. So I just thought, when I got to 50, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to get this out of my system.”
Betty’s double-whammy of debut single Doin’ the Doo and the hook-tastic follow-up Where Are You baby? lit up an often-vacuous pop scene. She released six more singles and two albums in Boomania and GRRR It’s Betty Boo, before leaving the limelight.
Hitting 50 was a pivotal moment for Betty. Her mum and dad only lived to 49 and 47 respectively. There was an urgency to experience the full-ness of life. Lockdown initially curtailed Betty’s comeback plans, but ultimately gave her the space in which to reconnect fully with her music.
“I started doubting myself. I was quite daunted. I thought ‘Is it silly to keep rapping in your fifties?’ But Chuck D’s still doing it, so why not? I ticked that box and I just kept going. It was liberating. I’ve rediscovered my voice again. This time it’s just a privilege.”
She marked her return in 2022 with a new album, Boomerang, as well as live shows at Islington Assembly Hall and Lafayette in King’s Cross. Those gigs were with a full band, while her latest tour will be her and a Boo-ette. In practical terms, she says, the stages are too small to accommodate the full shebang. Indeed, she’s picked some famously intimate grassroots venues for her first ever back-to-back headline tour of the UK — The Trades Club, Future Yard in Birkenhead, The Joiners in Southampton and Bedford Esquires, to name just a few.
“It’s going to be amazing. It’ll feel like a big, uplifting show. I don’t perform ballads or anything like that. It’s just not me. I like writing stuff that I can always escape to.”
The stripped-back stage set-up is not dissimilar to how she started out, performing at hip-hop jams across London.
“I was just a kid. You’d get flyers, or it’d be word of mouth – certain DJs putting on a jam in London. They were really small, very underground, and you’d go and do some rapping, or you’d be in a crew where you would perform at a sound system. It was quite brave really. You could easily just die on stage.”
Betty became a member of the She Rockers, an all-girl, hip-hop group that famously performed an impromptu rap to Public Enemy at their local McDonald’s in Shepherd’s Bush. An impressed Professor Griff promptly offered to produce their track Give It A Rest for the Music Of Life label and She Rockers supported Public Enemy in the US.
But it wasn’t until Betty featured on a top 10 hit – The Beatmasters’ Hey DJ/I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing – that she truly started to believe in her own abilities.
“The Beatmasters had this ready-made track and asked me to rap on it. They’d been on Top of the Pops loads of times and I thought ‘I’ve got to do a really good job here, or else I’m gonna just die’. So I did it. They took the first take and it made the record. And I remember thinking ‘I could actually do this’.”
With the money from the Beatmasters track, Betty bought some equipment. She was doing a course in sound engineering at the time and threw herself headfirst into sampling, sequencing and recording.
“I was a bit Betty no-mates, to be honest. I wasn’t really interested in going out or anything. I was living at home with my mum. I found it so interesting being able to sample beats and sample all these things. I was recording on the four track then, even though I was learning MIDI as well. Now it’s easy – you just do it on your phone.”
Despite an apparent shyness, Betty is fiercely determined with an old-school DIY ethic. Above all, she is genuine. Unlike the Stock, Aitken Waterman pop churn of the day, Betty was never manufactured. Her sound was always rooted in ‘serious’ underground rap. The chief inspiration for her look was a heartfelt personal passion for The Avengers’ Emma Peel. The sincerity cuts through. Consequently, the Betty Boo fanbase is a curious beast. There’s the expected core of 90s pop and groove-laden hip-hop lovers, sure, but also a fair chunk of alternative music fans.
“I was signed to an indie label, Rhythm King, so I think there was some credibility there. Rhythm King had Bomb The Bass, S-Express. We were part of this London nightclub scene. The label was under the Mute umbrella, with Daniel Miller, and he used to treat his artists with respect – bands like Depeche Mode, Erasure, Nick Cave, they believed in them.”
Betty Boo’s first two albums have been re-issued on CD, cassette and coloured vinyl. Take a look at the online Betty Boo store for more info.
Leave a Reply