Gift of the Gab

EVERY girl wants to be a soul diva, but few manage to rise above the level of spice. London girl Gabrielle, however, is in a class of her own, and the British record buying public voted her the Best Female Singer at last February's Brit Awards. OK, they also showered the S*** G***s with accolades, but we'll forgive that temporary lapse in taste. In Gabrielle, British soul has found a young singer who exudes more class than Posh Spice, more sass than Scary Spice, and more sex appeal than Ginger Spice's in your face exhibitionism.

You can hear it in her voice - a mature, lightly chilled timbre with a smoky after taste, and you can see it in her face, with its angular, finely sculpted features partly obscured by a swish of jet black hair. She used to wear an eye patch to cover up her lazy eye, but now she opts for a more subtle method of concealment, and the veil of hair over her face gives it a soft, slightly enigmatic look.

It's easy to get on first name terms with Gabrielle, but it's also easy to forget that she might actually have a surname. Her full name is Louise Gabrielle Bobb, and she grew up in a working class area of south east London, although you wouldn't know it from that sultry, sophisticated singing voice. In person, however, Gabrielle speaks with a chirpy London accent, tempered with a clear, measured diction, a sort of high register Mariella Frostrup with a bit of Tiffany from EastEnders thrown in.

She's telling me how it felt to win her Brit Award: "It was brilliant because I was up against good competition, people like Dina Carroll and Louise, and they're all great people, and to be able to go up and collect the award myself, it was a brilliant thing to happen, and it was a brilliant feeling."

Gabrielle's rise to the awards podiums began in 1993 with her debut single, Dreams, which in its earliest incarnation featured a contentious sample from a well known Tracy Chapman song. The song came about when Gabrielle was working with two young producer types, and they gave her a tape and asked her could she write some words and a melody for it.

"It wasn't until I took it home that I realised it was Fast Car by Tracy Chapman," she says, "and I thought, oh God, I love Fast Car, but I don't think I could write anything original for it. And it wasn't until I had to go to the studio on the day, and I was on the train thinking, oh my God, I haven't written anything. So I opened up my notebook where, I keep my songs, and Dreams was there, it gas one of the songs I had written some time back."

The final version of Dreams appeared minus the Fast Car sample, but it still managed to race up to pole position in the charts and notch up a million sales. Before that Gabrielle had been singing covers in nightclubs, playing the London soul circuit but with the success of Dreams, she was able to take her own lyrics and melodies and, working with production, teams, like The Boilerhouse Boys, begin crafting the songs for her debut album, Find Your Way. However, it wasn't until last year's Give Me Just A Little More Time, the first single on her, second, self titled, album, that people really sat up and took notice of the young soul diva with the eyepatch. By the time she got together with East 17 for the top 10 hit, If You Ever, the world and its teenage daughter knew Gabrielle's name.

How did she feel when Brian Harvey was sacked from East 17 soon after, because of his much publicised outburst on drugs? "I thought it was a bit sad, because he's a great singer. But I know that we'll be hearing a lot more from Brian. Once all that fuss dies down, people will realise that everybody makes mistakes every now and again, and it shouldn't end somebody's career.

"I try not to go on and on about drugs, because I'm not a drug taker myself, but what I do know about it is, there are a lot of kids who are fans of East 17, and in any one weekend there's so many kids that are going to be doing Es, and it's horrifying, especially as I've got a child myself. I think it brought - to the forefront of people's minds just how freely available it is and how much drugs are being consumed by kids and so called pop stars. I hope it will die down, and I hope a lot of children will have the sense to realise that it's not right, and you shouldn't take drugs and that they can kill."