Craig David has begun recording his second album in New York and London with producer Mark Hill and guitarist Fraser T. Smith, with whom David has been performing select acoustic shows. Hill produced David's debut, the international smash Born to Do It.

Many producers stepped forward with offers to work with the twenty-year-old R&B star, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it, David says. "I think that sometimes your sound starts to be lost in who's actually producing it, as opposed to your sound and who you are."

According to David, the new album's production will maintain the smooth R&B style of Born to Do It, but will move "to another level." "I want to have it, on the one hand, a little bit harder and, on the other hand, something that people haven't really touched on yet," he says. "I mean, you've had Missy [Elliott] and she's thrown that whole bhangra/Asian feel on her stuff, and you have Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin who have that whole Spanish thing going on . . . We're going to play around with some string quartets and stuff like that and also I want to go somewhere with the Latin thing, but not where everyone else has gone. I want it hard on the beat side. I want the music to really be uplifting."

Craig is hoping that his U.K indie label, Wildstar, and U.S. major Atlantic will be able to synchronize the release dates for the next album for early 2002.

Born To Do It has racked up gold and platinum awards in countries as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Poland and Singapore, not to mention all over Europe. "It's is quite surreal that it's gone everywhere else apart from America, and now I come over and start on the same album," he says. "When people say, 'Oh that's the guy from the "Fill Me In" video,' you can remember the excitement that you had back in the day when it first started."

KAREN BLISS
(September 25, 2001)