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Lisa Maffia: Made Famous by So Solid Crew, Made Fearless Herself
It’s the summer of 2001. I’m 16, and I have a song stuck in my head. People are blasting it from cars, it’s on repeat on the kitchen radio at my restaurant job, and I keep looking out for it on MTV Base. It’s rap, but much faster than the US rap I know. The two-step beat is infuriatingly catchy. There’s one female vocalist – her voice is ethereal, but assured, lilting but edgy. In the video, she steps through the crowd of men rapping on the track to deliver her lines. She’s wearing a strapless leather dress – she reminds me of Kylie, but – to use an expression of the era – with extra attitude. She’s incredibly sexy, and quietly powerful. She’s the only woman in the space, but she’s not Smurfette. She’s not the Pink Power Ranger. She’s holding her own. I learn that she’s called Lisa Maffia, which must be a cool stage name.
Twenty-five years later, I’m reading her memoir.
‘My name really is Lisa MAFFIA. It has been my name from day one and is clearly printed on my birth certificate.’ The other members of So Solid Crew did come up with new names, but they told Lisa ‘That name is bad! You literally cannot improve upon that, you ain’t changing your name!’
This is a perfect origin story for one of the most authentic women I have ever met.
The memoir isn’t what I was expecting. I thought I knew the story, because I’ve seen so many versions of it. A young person grows up with next to nothing, only for their life to be transformed by fame and fortune, seemingly overnight. What happens next is typically tragic. For many young people, fame is fatal. How can anyone cope with the sudden rush of exposure, and all the demands that are being made of them? Then, there’s the money. Pop stars, like lottery winners, go broke – because, as Lisa herself told me, ‘You look at all that money sitting in your bank account, and you think it’s going to last forever.’ She told me that when her first royalty payment arrived in her Abbey National current account – ‘the account I’d had since I was 12 – I couldn’t even read the number. It was something like £350,000, and I couldn’t see it. I didn’t know how to process it.’ She was barely in her twenties.
Most pop group graduates struggle to attain solo success. Maffia’s solo career got off to a promising start, with a platinum selling single ‘All Over’ – but her album failed to reach the Top 40, and her label stopped promoting her. Typically, this would be where most people start to unravel – the point where the wheels came off. But it was the making of Maffia, and ultimately led to a record label, a production company, a rum brand and interior design business.
‘I realised I had to back myself. No-one else was going to come forward to support me. I had to be creative, and make things happen,’ she says. She discovered her entrepreneurial spirit and became a booking agent. And an interior designer. And a broadcaster. And the head of a rum brand. ‘One big thing I learned from the So Solid Boys? Never apologise for yourself in a meeting. In the old days, even when a meeting went well, I used to leave worrying about what I said, and how I expressed myself. Now, I might have a moment when the brain fog kicks in, or when I’m feeling overwhelmed because I’ve got so many projects on the go, and I trip over my words. I feel completely comfortable saying “Can I take a moment to gather myself?” The boys are so straightforward. They taught me not to apologise, especially not for stating your needs. They showed me how to let people take me as I am. Without being crude, they gave me balls.’
‘The boys’ are the members of the UK garage and hip hop collective So Solid Crew – a group with a fluctuating line up of between 19 and 30 members. In the beginning, Lisa was the only female member of the group, ‘and I got used to being overlooked by the industry.’ I’m curious about the role she played when it came to determining the group’s image and branding. As a young woman, Lisa didn’t have many chances to speak out, but the media placed her front and centre. ‘You get sexualised. Objectification was huge back then. I was posing in these men’s mags. It was so awkward, because they’d be talking about the So Solid record, but there’s Lisa, butt naked. I look back and wonder how I had the courage to do that. But I knew it was part of the business. The boys taught me to take the emotion out of [the experience] and see what it actually does for you.’
In the memoir, Maffia writes about struggling with her body image and feeling self-conscious on stage. Borrowing from ‘the boys’ could only take her so far, and the male members of the Crew simply didn’t face the same level of scrutiny as Maffia when it came to their appearance. She writes that support came from her make-up ladies, ChiChi and Kim Menzies. ‘They became like my tour mums…it has taken me years to build my confidence and become the woman that I am now in music, and they really gave me that start.’
It doesn’t surprise me to learn that Maffia feels much more powerful now than she did in the pin-up days. ‘It took years to feel this way, where I just know that anything I put my mind to, I can do. It could be the most random business, but I know that if it’s something I absolutely, truly believe in, I can make it happen. There’s no fear of failure. But I haven’t always been this way. It’s come with the failure, and taking control of my career, and taking control of my life in its entirety.’
Maffia took control when the phone stopped ringing. After the release of her solo album, she wasn’t getting the support – or work – she needed from her booking agent, so she took the job on herself. ‘I started collecting numbers and emails for different clubs and venues. I’d ring them up. I used to pretend my name was Selina, and I used to put on this extreme cockney voice. I’d say I was Lisa’s agent, and send them all these photos, and that’s how I booked gigs. I used to call myself UC Bookings, which stood for Undercover Bookings – because I was an undercover agent.’
This was an act born out of creative necessity, as well as a financial need. Maffia wanted work, but she wanted to perform. ‘But it turned into a business. My contacts were asking me about other members of the UK garage scene, so I started booking shows for my peers – Oxide and Neutrino, Shola Ama, Kele Le Roc. And I’d get a standard contract off the internet, sending an invoice, taking my little commission, and from there on in it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I loved it.’
From the start, So Solid Crew struggled to book live shows, as the group was associated with several controversies connected to gun violence. After several promoters cancelled shows, they made the decision to cancel their tour in December 2001. In her memoir, Maffia is frank about how the situation in the group became strained due to the behaviour of some of its members. Looking back, we’re both surprised that the government and the media demonised So Solid Crew, instead of speaking directly to their fans about the dangers of guns. ‘We were in touch with every teenage child that was out there. I used to do gun amnesty events all the time. We could have been so much more powerful, and used in a positive way, but we were just ignored.’
Maffia’s own childhood wasn’t easy. She grew up sharing a bed with her grandmother and her baby sister Kelly, before moving to a two bedroom council flat with Kelly and her Mum. In the book, she shares details of how she struggled with feelings of claustrophobia when Kelly had a baby at the age of 15, and Kelly’s boyfriend moved in too. ‘A lot of bad things happened that left me traumatised,’ she writes, explaining that living in Brixton in the 80s and 90s meant living with a lot of cultural contrasts. ‘One day I was a kid playing on the balcony of our flats, heading off to a dance class or going to the shops with my Nan. The next minute I had seen death, rape, drugs, guns, knives and gang culture.’
I ask her how it felt to revisit some of the more painful memories and write about them. ‘In the beginning, I had to dig up some awful memories that I’d chosen to forget about, but it’s been very healing. There was always something awful, but then there was something great. It’s made me feel incredibly positive.’
Maffia believes her upbringing fuelled her creativity and inspired some of her biggest business ventures. ‘We did a lot of puzzles, art, painting, drawing, dressing up. I think that’s where my style of business comes from. You can think of anything and put it out into the atmosphere.’ She explains that this creative spirit led her to set up her production company. ‘I was doing short adverts for MySpace, and every time I went to a production company or a videographer, they didn’t get what I wanted to do. So I did it myself.’
When Maffia was 18, she gave birth to her daughter, Chelsea. When Chelsea was 18 months old, she left her father, John, who was abusive and controlling. Subsequently, she had a ‘relationship of toxicity’ with a man she calls Clyde, a low period which coincided with some key members of So Solid Crew leaving, and member Carl Morgan being jailed for murder. Maffia found herself ‘kind of in limbo’, but true to form, she found a way forward, setting up her own label Maffia Recordz. ‘It was easier to focus on building someone else up instead [of myself]. I found I did genuinely enjoy the business side of it too’.
Maffia is now a grandmother to Chelsea’s little boy. ‘It feels like a second chance, as a grown up, to be a mother again. I love that. My friend is 42, and she’s just had her first child. A lot of people do their career first, but I’m glad I got to do it the other way round, because I think that sometimes you can fall so deep into a career that you can never let go, especially with the cost of living.’
Maffia is refreshingly candid about money. Most of the members of So Solid Crew had several entrepreneurial sidelines. After she left John, Maffia was in a relationship with group member G-Man, and the pair had a small business selling used cars before the music took off. The pair bought a white van for £130 and drove it around South London, selling their own white label records out of the back, raising their profile and building a following. ‘It was my Mum’s idea. We couldn’t afford to get the record into shops, and she said “Why don’t you just sell it yourselves?”
It’s clear that Maffia’s mother has been the greatest influence on her life. ‘My Mum created the most beautiful house for us, all by herself. She did so much on her own. And she makes me think that if she brought me up, I can do it too. She taught me “don’t quit on yourself, because it’s only yourself you’ve given up on”. And not to rely too much on other people’s opinions.’
And Maffia has been able to share her wisdom with her mother too. ‘My Mum would be the one to say “don’t give yourself stress, don’t get a mortgage, that’s too stressful.” Luckily I’ve been able to share with her what I’ve been taught by others - that it’s worth having property, that Chelsea has a house, and it will be my grandson’s house. If you can’t afford it, you can always sell it and get your money back.’
Music is still in Maffia’s life. At the start of the year, she released a single, Fever, with the house producer Molly Mouse, and she has a Sunday afternoon show on Capital Xtra, where she plays classic hip hop and R&B. ‘I really want to try my hand in theatre. I absolutely love theatre. I’ve seen every single show in the West End, and I want to try and bring garage music into theatre, as a writer and a performer.’ If anyone can make this happen, my money’s on Maffia.
Even though she’s just written a book about her life so far, I suspect Maffia is the sort of person who’d rather look forward than back. ‘I’m a creative, and my mind works at a thousand miles an hour. I’ve always come up with ideas, and I make myself just do [them]. Just do it, just try it, just start it. If it doesn’t work out, if it feels too stressful, let it go. I’ve got to be comfortable. It’s got to be fluent for me, easy for me. The way I’ve created all my businesses is – just give it a go.’
The memoir fulfils many functions – it’s a testament to courage, a celebration of ambition, a declaration of independence and an invitation to try out all our big ideas and see what happens. She’s a grafter, but she freely admits that some of her biggest breaks came by chance. I suspect she makes her own luck. She’s known success and struggles. ‘I really hope that people who are going through any sort of hardship read the book and know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I really hope they get a positive, uplifting motivational feeling from the memoir.’ When I was a teenager, Maffia was an exciting, inspiring figure. A quarter of a century later, I find her even more so.
“Lisa’s story continues in her book, First Lady. For more incredible women doing their best work now, meet theALLBRIGHT’s 40 Over 40, in partnership with UKLASH.”
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