Tulisa has blamed ‘The X Factor’ for the delay in releasing new music.
The former N-Dubz star recently resigned with record label Xploded Music and released her comeback single ‘Daddy’, the follow-up to 2016’s ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’ with WSTRN’s Akelle.
Tulisa says her new single is more authentic than previous releases – including her first solo single ‘Younger’ – and admits ‘The X Factor’ negatively influenced her career.
She told NME: "If it hadn’t been for ‘X Factor’, I don’t think ‘Young’ would have been my first [solo] single. On a family show, you have to keep up appearances, and fit into a mould. I definitely adapted myself a lot and played a version of myself for a long time. And this is why I’m so excited about moving forward: there’s gonna be none of that now. This is the Tulisa that would have come out as a solo artist straight off of N-Dubz. Take X-Factor out of the equation and this is the kind of artist I would always be."
Tulisa also believes that she lost her "swag" when she first went solo.
She said: "When you’re a singer, you can come across as quite generic. But back in the old days, when I did something like [N-Dubz hit] ‘Girls’, I always had more of a rappy-singing swag. I was putting my stamp on it; I had a style. And I stopped doing that for a long while. What I’m doing with my new material is bringing it back – bringing back that slight rappy edge. When I was releasing pop songs, I lost that swag. It was a conscious decision: I was trying to play the pop game, and I wanted to be as far away from urban as possible, because of the reputation I’d gained after all the… all the shit. So I was kind of trying to dress up in suits every day and play the prim and proper princess, which wasn’t me at all. But I just wanted everything to calm down and fade out before I started rocking out in my hoodies and bomber jackets again and letting people know what I was about."
Tulisa says X Factor stopped her from being authentic
