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By Annika Allen

It was while working as a backing dancer for stars like Beverley Knight and Busta Rhymes in her hometown of Birmingham, that Zena decided on a career change. Wanting to take centre stage herself, she packed her bags and headed for the bright lights of London in search of stardom. Luckily for her, the move paid off because she was picked out of hundreds to join new R&B girl group Mis-Teeq at her first ever audition. Happy at her achievement, Zena explains how her initial joy soon turned to sadness: “Everything was fine at the beginning ’cos it was fun. We all got to know each other ’cos I’d not met them before. But as time went on and as the months passed by, there was a bit of an unbalance in the group. I didn’t really have much say… and it was just making me unhappy.”

As Zena was one of the final members added to the line up, she felt that hers was the final opinion taken into account when it came to making decisions in the group. “Sabrina and Alesha were there prior to me being there… There was an imbalance in the group. It was like ’cos they’d been there the longest, the production company just leaned more to them, where I had a lot of good ideas and I write a lot too, you know? I know I’m talented. It’s not even that I think I am, I know that I brought something to the group, but they just weren’t allowing me to bring what I had to the group. It was like, ‘you do this, you do that.’ I was being a bit suppressed. It wasn’t that I wanted to do everything, but if you’re in a group that’s what the name is, a group. You’re a team, so you’re suppose to share everything and be able to talk to each other and compromise, but there wasn’t a lot of compromise. I don’t know how it is now, but at the time when I was in the group that’s how it was going and I just wasn’t happy.”

Once Mis-Teeq’s song ‘Why’ was remixed into a Garage tune, it was guaranteed to be a top ten hit but that still didn’t deter Zena from her decision to leave the group. “I knew that ‘Why’ was going to go top ten. I knew that… we were all talented in our own right. I’d also recorded other songs with them, so I knew what follow up songs we had, and we had some good tunes. So my decision was based not on the success, but on me thinking that everyday I wake up and I know that I’ve got to go somewhere that I’m going to be unhappy. What people are seeing on TV and what we’re gonna have to portray is going to be false, and that’s not what I’m about. I just didn’t want to do it. I believe in myself enough to say ‘Alright, I’m going to start again and do it myself,’ and I am.”

Starting again is exactly what she has done. As a matter of fact, she’s been a very busy girl, jet setting to Atlanta, Georgia, to record her album, as well as having a lot of fun and meeting a lot of celebs on the way. “My album’s called ‘It’s About Time.’ I recorded the majority of it in America. I worked with some producers called Redzone, they did ‘Case of the Ex’ for Mya, [wrote songs for] Blu Cantrell, TLC, loads of people. And a guy called Focus who did a track for me called ‘Pull Your Breaks’ - Kandi Buress [formerly of Xscape] wrote it.”

While recording in the studio with Kandi, Zena had a surprise visit from those crazy, sexy, cool ladies, TLC. “A representative from VH1 came in the studio first and said that they had TLC outside. They wanted to know if they could have my permission to come in on the session and interview Kandi, so I thought as my manager’s a bit of a joker, I was thinking that someone was joking around with me. I was like, ‘TLC are asking my permission to come into the session?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Next thing I know, I see T-Boz and Chilli walking in with cameras and stuff, and they interview Kandi ’cos obviously she wrote ‘No Scrubs’ for them.”

Still on a high from meeting TLC, she was then given the opportunity to meet Whitney Houston. “I worked with Bobby Brown and he brought his wife Whitney Houston in to meet me. Bobby took me to LA on his private jet to Usher Raymond's birthday party and also got me a spot in the Ja Rule and Bobby Brown ‘Thug Lovin’ video.”

It’s not surprising that Brown took a shine to the 23-year-old singer, because not only is she a talented singer/songwriter, but she is also very beautiful. Before you go thinking that Bobby just wanted some, whether he did or didn’t it would have mattered, because Zena’s boyfriend of five years is also her manager, so his presence would have prevented any moves Bobby might had up his sleeve.

Some people may say that having her man as her manager is a bad idea, but Zena disagrees. “If anything, I would say that it’s helped me a lot. I believe that if I wasn’t with my boyfriend I wouldn’t be as far as I am. ’Cos there were times [when I was thinking that] I can’t do this, this isn’t going to happen. I live down here [in London] and I could be on the phone to my family all the time, but it’s having someone around you who’s actually there that counts, and he was like ‘No, you can’. He’s the person that gave me the drive. (Laughing) I’m embarrassing him now!” Zena’s boyfriend/manager Heon is sitting opposite us, and shyly looks away as our eyes turn towards him. Obviously in love, this partnership seems to be working out very well for them. “Not to come off corny or anything, but he’s been my back bone ’cos there’s been times when you’re not believing in yourself as much as you should, and it takes that person to say ‘Of course you can, you’re heavy, you’re this, you’re that’. A lot of people are naïve to this industry and they’re all snakes in this business. That’s not me being horrible about it, that’s how it is… Everyone’s gonna tell you you’re fantastic and beautiful but you really need somebody around you that’s gonna keep it real with you and tell you how it is. Also as management [somebody] whose got your back, not just they’re own back for their percentage. This game is all about money. As an artist you want to be creative, that’s why you need someone around you to take it all on board, someone you can trust at the same time. For me it’s just worked. I know for a lot of people to have their partner around them all the time might not work, but it’s worked for us.”

Heon even set up the link for Beenie Man to feature on the album version of her single ‘Been Around the World’. The single version due to drop this month features hot reggae bwoy of the moment, Vybz Cartel. “When we were in Jamaica hooking up with Beenie Man, we heard of this guy called Vybz Cartel. I’m gonna be honest, before that I hadn’t heard of him, but there was this buzz on the street. His style is very different to what is going on at the moment, so I was like, ‘Why don’t we have Beenie Man and Vybz Cartel?’”

Having the ‘gyal dem suga’ and the man that’s ‘sweet to the belly’ on her soon-to-be-released single should definitely get the track noticed, but regardless of whether the song charts at number 1 or 21, Zena is a fighter and she’ll be back to attack the music game again.

Look out for Zena’s single ‘Been Around the World’ and her album ‘It’s About Time’ out soon.