Craig David talks ditching his obsessive fitness regime, moving on from an all-time low and looking for The One
After five years in the pop wilderness, the nicest guy in music is back and feeling better than ever
LESS than 60 seconds after walking into our shoot, Craig David has been ambushed.
Out of nowhere, four women whip out their phones and ask him for a photo.
Naturally, Craig is more than happy to oblige the quartet, who just happened to be passing our photo studio.
When a middle-aged male courier arrives to drop off a package minutes later, he too emerges as another triumphant selfie-hunter.
By all accounts, it’s becoming a bit of a logistical problem.
According to his manager, catching a flight on time when travelling through a busy airport with the 35-year-old singer is but a distant memory.
These snap-happy fans all have the same look about them – an intensity in their eyes, jaws agape as they clutch their phones in their sweaty palms.
And Craig is enjoying every minute of it.
“I embrace selfies. It takes me two seconds and I get more excited than the person having the picture,” he grins.
“I know it’s going to make their week, and surely that’s what this is all about?”
It’s not hard to understand why Craig is in his element.
After five years in the pop wilderness, his sudden resurgence has surprised everyone – not least the man himself.
It’s been a whopping 17 years since he featured on Artful Dodger’s No.2 hit Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta), which brought garage to the forefront of the UK music scene.
Over the years, there have been well-documented highs – thanks to debut album Born To Do It selling over 8 million copies worldwide – and difficult career lows (we’re looking at you, Leigh Francis and Bo’ Selecta!).
More of which later…
Now back with a new album, the last 12 months have seen him perform on The X Factor final, secure a residency at Ibiza Rocks Hotel and score his 12th Top 10 single with comeback track When The Bassline Drops.
And he is taking none of it for granted.
“If you get the opportunity to come full circle after the roller-coaster ride you’ve been on, you look at things differently,” he says.
“I never spend too much time checking stats or where my records are charting. I leave that to the experts. Now I look at [my career] as meeting new people and having new experiences.”
This newly enthused Craig is evident on our shoot, as he’s clearly relishing every second.
Behind the scenes he’s a bundle of energy despite having already had a full day of work commitments, charming the team with anecdotes and singing snippets of his new songs.
And after turning up an hour late (blame the combination of an overrunning schedule and gridlocked traffic) he walks around the room and personally apologises to everyone.
It’s easy to see why it’s become cool to like Craig David again.
And it’s a very different man we see before us.
Gone are the bulging biceps and rippling six-pack that once dominated his Instagram account.
In their place is a softer yet still very buff bod.
“I feel a sexy physique is looking good in a T-shirt and keeping it underneath,” he says.
“Not the flip, which is what I had before, where I was putting lots of [topless] pictures up. I was like: ‘Why are you doing this? No one wants to see it.’
“I’m not going to be that guy taking my top off at pool parties. I’m not about that any more.”
It’s a much healthier attitude to fitness.
Four years ago, Craig developed a dangerous obsession with exercise, working out six days a week doing abs, triceps and leg exercises.
He previously attributed his need for control over his body to being overweight in his teenage years and admitted: “The overweight kid will always find a way of being that fat kid inside.”
Craig’s extreme fitness schedule saw the 5ft 10in star’s weight beef up to 13st while his body fat, at just 7%, was the same as an elite athlete’s. But after realising exercise was taking over his life – as well as leaving him looking gaunt and prematurely aged – he dramatically eased up on his regime.
“The training now fits around my music rather than the other way round, which is when I knew that it was off the scale,” he says.
“I realised a six-pack is not going to change my life. It’s always going to be there, maybe under a few more layers of fat than before. I like the feeling exercise gives me, but when I do training sessions it’s now about how I can bring my performance up.”
He has also eased up on his diet.
“Life is about enjoying food with your friends and socialising,” he says.
“If you want to eat the pizza, go and eat the pizza. But on the whole, I like to eat as healthily as I possibly can.
“I will do three days in the gym, as I still like the feeling of waking up and doing 30-45 minutes of training. But if I don’t fit it in then I don’t beat myself up. Doing dumb-bells all day is never going to compare with writing a song that connects with millions of people.”
His refreshing new attitude has been a hit with the ladies, though that’s nothing new.
His exes have included a Miss Great Britain finalist and Modern Family star Sofía Vergara, as well as several other celebrities whose names he refuses to reveal.
Craig is nothing if not a gentleman.
Even at the very height of his fame, with two Grammy nods and 12 Brit Award nominations under his belt, he treated fans who were, ahem, keen to know him better, with respect.
“Of course I enjoyed the period of time where I was like: ‘Wow, there’s a lot of interest.’ But however frivolous I may have been having fun, it felt wrong to call a taxi [for them afterwards],” he explains.
“Instead, I would think: ‘I will spend time with you, enjoy the morning and make you lunch.’
“I enjoyed my time and I’m not going to paint myself as an angel. I had an amazing time. But was it fulfilling? No. Did I find myself in any of it? No. Were the quality of the relationships great? Not really. I can still count the genuine relationships I’ve had on one hand.”
The days of taking women home for the night are long gone.
Craig is single and looking for The One.
“A relationship will always come when you least expect it. I don’t abuse the situation or the position I have. I’ve been DJing at an Ibiza pool party for the last eight weeks and you’ve got bikini-clad girls all around you. But I’m not that guy who would pick them out and invite them back. I haven’t got time for that. I’m really happy that I’m not in that place any more.
“The universe lines you up with people and you just have to go with the flow. Do the right thing and the right thing will happen to you.”
Right now he’s one of pop’s most eligible bachelors, but marriage is not something that’s on his radar.
“It’s a funny one because you need to find a soulmate before you even worry about marriage,” he says.
“A lot of people are into getting married because it completes two halves. It’s an old-school, fairy tale, Hollywood view. It creates neediness and
[the feeling of]: ‘If I haven’t got you then I can’t function’. You go into it with the best intentions, but it becomes about dependency.
“From my perspective, you’re already whole and want to find another soul who holds and supports you. I’ve found that if you can be the most whole, balanced and grounded human then you’ll meet like-minded people.
“I feel that when – because inevitably it’s going to happen – I find that person, then it will feel right.”
Craig’s parents – mother Tina, a retail assistant, and Grenadian dad George, a carpenter – split when he was eight years old.
He grew up as an only child with his mum and grandmother in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Southampton – Holyrood council estate.
He remained close to his dad, who played bass guitar in a local reggae band, and was with him in a West Indian social club when, aged 14, he was handed a microphone by the DJ.
Within a few years, Craig was being booked for residencies in London nightclubs, where he met garage duo MC Alistair and DJ Dave Low, AKA Artful Dodger.
And the rest, as they say, is history – in 2000, aged 18, Craig reached No.1 with Fill Me In.
It’s his background that has kept him grounded throughout the roller-coaster years of fame.
“I give credit to how my mum and dad raised me,” he says.
“Growing up on a council estate, it was easy to get into all sorts of nonsense through boredom. Thankfully, I found music and that became my path. It then became about keeping the music as a passion. Friends would call and ask to go raving, but I’d say that I needed to stay in and finish a song.
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“I’ve always been surrounded by good people. I don’t have any ‘yes’ people, and my foundation was to never believe the hype. I was never going to go off the rails because I was too aware of the opportunity.”
There are inevitable downsides to fame, though – and Craig has certainly experienced the lows as well as the highs.
In 2002, thanks to Channel 4 comedy show Bo’ Selecta! and comedian Leigh Francis, a rubbery caricature became the bane of his life.
Under his alter ego, star-stalker Avid Merrion, the comedian ridiculed Craig with his impersonations, using catchphrases that went on to become famous themselves (remember: “Can I get a reeewind”?).
The sketch show ran for three series and also featured rubber-masked versions of Mel B and Michael Jackson.
The same year, Craig’s second album Slicker Than Your Average went to No.4, selling 3.5 million copies.
Impressive, but the sales were less than half of his debut, and soon fingers were pointing in the direction of Bo’ Selecta! for Craig’s so-called flop.
With the benefit of hindsight, Craig has made peace with the show’s mickey-taking.
He even managed to hug it out with Leigh at the wedding of their mutual pal Fearne Cotton two years ago.
“It was like Spitting Image back in the day, but the radar was more on me because it was called Bo’ Selecta! My character had come from such a well-known song. If it had featured David Beckham and been called Bend It Like Beckham, then it would have been more about him, but it just happened to be me.
“Some industry people said to embrace it and others said to hate the guy. At the time, I wasn’t really bothered as I just wanted to make songs in the studio and there wasn’t any social media to nip it in the bud. I always believed it was going to run its course, as he was doing what a comedian does.
“It is what it is – he rinsed it a bit longer than it necessarily needed to be, but it gave me a little clarity.”
After his fifth album Signed, Sealed, Delivered, limped to No.13 in 2010, Craig decided to have a rethink about where his career was going by moving to Miami.
He sold his north London home, bought a penthouse apartment in the Mondrian South Beach Hotel and spent his days driving around in his red Ferrari.
After years of jam-packed schedules, he had time for himself and enjoyed life on his rooftop balcony, hosting pool parties and working out.
But he never lost his love of music and continued to make tracks in the recording studio at his apartment.
The UK soon came calling again thanks to an appearance on Mista Jam’s BBC 1Xtra show, in which he sang an updated version of Fill Me In. Combined with an appearance on The X Factor alongside Reggie ‘N’ Bollie, the nation fell back in love with Craig.
Such is the demand in the UK that he’s now relocated to London, living in hotels and rented properties while he looks for a permanent base.
“Some people say that [Bo’ Selecta!] damaged the brand – people thought I wasn’t being taken seriously,” Craig shrugs.
“Every cloud has a silver lining because every time you get a knock, it refocuses you. At the time I didn’t know because I was in the eye of the storm, but there was a bigger plan involved.
“In hindsight, had someone said: ‘Go off the radar, let things change and there might be an opportunity for you if you’re ready for it,’ that’s when you start to realise there’s a beautiful thing in lows and failures. People had somehow sold into my head that my second album was a failure and I started buying into the nonsense. It was such a good time to go away. Now I’m coming back feeling rejuvenated.”
Craig’s new album Following My Intuition is out on Friday. Tickets to his UK arena tour are on sale now at Craigdavid.com.
