Kele Le Roc Has the Voice, the Band and a Place in the V&A

Two MOBOs, a Basement Jaxx top 10, a Wednesday residency in Mayfair and a role in a British fantasy film. Kele Le Roc never slowed down and she looks incredible doing it.

“A brilliant producer and an ok singer will still give you a great song. Then Kele Le Roc opens her mouth and the equation changes.”

I’ve had a saying for years. A brilliant producer and an ok singer will still give you a great song. Then Kele Le Roc opens her mouth and the equation changes, because her voice makes the record. Everything else is decoration, gorgeous decoration, but decoration.

“My Love” is my favourite of hers and the country agreed with me in 1999 when it climbed to number eight and won her the MOBO for Best Single. The garage remixes, 10° Below‘s vocal mix above all, turned it into a floor-filler that never left the club. She’s joked that the garage version pays her bills. It has earned every penny.

“Her voice makes the record.”

The story starts long before that. Kelly Biggs grew up in East London and her mum caught her tap dancing along to a Nicholas Brothers musical, so the dance classes began at three. She was in a studio by twelve. By sixteen she was supporting American R&B acts Total and Horace Brown while studying performing arts at Epping Forest College and her white label “Let Me Know” had the labels sniffing around in 1995. Polydor picked up her deal in 1997 and off she went to Los Angeles for three months, a teenager from London cruising around Beverly Hills in a convertible Mustang. She wrote her debut album ‘Everybody’s Somebody’ there with Harvey Mason Jr (Brandy, Chante Moore), Rhett Lawrence (Mariah Carey, Monica, Eternal) and Robbie Nevil. She hung out with Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott and Hype Williams and she met Rick James at a set of traffic lights. Only in LA.

“Little Bit of Lovin’” and “My Love” both landed at number eight and the two MOBOs followed, Best Newcomer and Best Single. From there the collaborations read like a festival line-up spanning three decades. Basement Jaxx took her to number six with “Romeo” in 2001. Shy FX and T Power pulled her into jungle and drum and bass on “Feelin’ U“. Sticky gave us “Things We Do for Love“. Curtis Lynch Jr with Red Rat, Courtney Pine, Omar, Damage, Lee Henry, True Steppers, Coolio and 10° Below have all had her on a track, and more recently so have Gok Wan and Craig Knight. Jazz, Garage, Jungle, R&B and she sounds at home in every one. Prince is her number one influence, followed by Chaka Khan, Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston and that education shows in her phrasing.

“Same magnetism, better lighting.”

Which brings us to Wednesdays. Every week she takes over Sheesh in Mayfair with her band, billed at nine players strong. Picture a blues and jazz singer from decades ago working a smoky club until the small hours, then swap the smoke for candlelight and a Mayfair dining room. Same magnetism, better lighting. She sings Radiohead’s “Creep” there most weeks and the version she recorded with her SINC Records family took about an hour, backing vocals included, layered with whispers that give it a haunted edge. She’s gone back to her roots and stretched them at the same time. The House & Garage Orchestra turned “My Love” into a full orchestral piece for the 2018 album Garage Classics and she has been talking about a live album with her full band, Le Roc Music Volume One, all original material.

“One minute you’re a garage queen, the next you’re ruling a tribe with wings.”

Meanwhile, the museums have noticed. The Music Is Black: A British Story opened at V&A East on 18 April 2026 and runs until 3 January 2027, tracing 125 years of Black British music through eight genres, UK garage among them. “My Love” sits in the garage section of the V&A‘s official playlist for the show. A record from a 1999 club scene now belongs to the story a national museum tells about Britain and that still gives me goosebumps.
Then she goes and joins a fantasy film. In The Toymaker’s Key, an independent British motion comic feature directed by Andy Turner and Drew Casson, Kele voices iO, leader of the Butterfly People, alongside drum and bass star Harry Shotta as Tommy Hargreaves and former Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt as MaNa. She and Harry also made music for the soundtrack. One minute you’re a garage queen, the next you’re ruling a tribe with wings. I LOVE this timeline.

“Kele Le Roc treats a career like a house she loves. The foundations stay and every few years she knocks through a wall.”

Scroll her Instagram and you’ll find a schedule that would flatten most of us. Gigs, travel, rehearsals, her own Le Catsuit clothing line and a home and even a car styled with a designer’s eye. She’s toured the world in the Ray Charles musical I Can’t Stop Loving You, presented on TV and joined a music project in Mali in 2008. Through all of it, she looks incredible. Her attitude to work deserves serious study. Kele Le Roc treats a career like a house she loves. The foundations stay and every few years she knocks through a wall, paints a new room and invites everyone round.

INTERVIEW:

CHERYL: Prince lives in your head, heart and soul. If he walked into Sheesh on a Wednesday, which song would you panic-swap out of the set and which would you lean into harder?

Kele Le Roc: “We change up the set every week asides from my obvious anthems. I often start with a new track off the forthcoming album and to be honest Prince could hear most tracks of mines and know that I love him lol. I would probably sing ‘on and poppin’ though as it has a Prince inspired killer guitar solo, by the amazing Barry Wynne.”

CHERYL: “My Love” now sits in a national museum’s story of Britain. If a curator asked you to donate one object from your career to sit beside it, what would you hand over?

Kele Le Roc: “I grew up in Newham and my borough gave me an award many years ago for outstanding achievement my childhood dance teacher, Yvonne Dearman presented it to me at a show. I was so touched and I balled my eyes out. Especially as newham under extreme petition didn’t award me a grant to go to stage school lol.”

CHERYL: You voice iO, leader of the Butterfly People. What does iO know that Kele took a few decades to learn?

“You have to fight for whats yours and for what you believe in. Not that I never believed these things but I would always second guess myself when I was younger and believe that those older were always wiser instead of trusting my heart and my gut. Plus no one knows you better than yourself.”

CHERYL: You design your own catsuits and style everything from your home to your car. Which design decision taught you the most about arranging a song?

Kele Le Roc: “The reason why I enjoy creating so much, is because I take a deep pride in taking something from scratch into something exceptional almost unbelievably so. Im also a grafter and I relish the hard work required in anticipation of the desired outcome. This work ethic transcends seamlessly into my music creation too and all the other things that surround it.”

CHERYL: You recorded “Creep” in about an hour, backing vocals and all. What’s the longest you’ve ever fought a song and did the fight make it better?

Kele Le Roc: “There are some tracks on this new album that started their lives 20 years ago. I have revocalled some of them 4/5 times. I have also just had the whole album re produced, re mixed and re mastered for 2027. I guess you could say im a perfectionist. I will always strive to be the best version of myself and the best me I can be. The plus side with Creep was that I had been singing it for a while at Sheesh thus perfecting its execution that boded me well in the studio session and im very proud of what we achieved with that rendition”