TORONTO — Now that Taio Cruz is a certifiable international pop star — his Break Your Heart has topped the charts in the United States, Canada and his native U.K. — he can finally feel free to start acting the part and unleash his inner diva.
Except that’s not really his style.
“I don’t have diva tendencies,” the soft-spoken Cruz said with a laugh during a trip to Toronto this week. “Usually, my rider is one bottle of water. That’s it.
“Sometimes I don’t even ask for that.”
That sounds uncommon, maybe, but then Cruz has taken an thoroughly unusual path thus far in his career.
The 27-year-old — born Adetayo Ayowale Onile-Ere to a Nigerian father and a Brazilian mother in London — began as a songwriter (he’s penned tunes for Usher, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Kylie Minogue) before being singled out in Britain as a potential star talent in his own right.
His first record, 2008’s “Departure” — a thoroughly smooth record fusing his elastic vocals and disco-infused pop production — went gold in Britain, and he followed with Rokstarr the next year, another digestible collection of dancefloor-ready pop/R&B tunes.
That record eventually proved to be his Stateside gateway, particularly after he released a remixed version of his buoyant breakout Break Your Heart with an obligatory Ludacris guest vocal added in.
Cruz notes non-rock acts from the U.K. have had trouble breaking into the U.S. music scene in recent years. So what was different about him?
“I’m really, really, really sexy,” he said with a laugh. “No, I’m just kidding, that’s my ongoing joke.”
“But I think just the musical trends have changed and (pop music) is sounding a little more dance-y and European, and that ... allows (listeners) to be a little more susceptible to U.K.-sounding music.”
Cruz says he takes cues from musical movements bubbling a fair distance below the mainstream — “I listen to underground electro and dubstep, like really grimy records that people would never expect, and then I listen to ABBA, and then you kind of fuse the two,” he explains.
And he says that experimental mentality has pop music moving in a more interesting direction.
“There was definitely a while when pop music had no soul in it, and it was just all about manufactured kids, five guys who were not necessarily the best singers but looked good, and the songs that had all the soul ripped out of them,” he said.
“Whereas the origins of pop music didn’t have to do that. Michael Jackson and Madonna made pop music, and it was great, and the production was amazing, and it had musicianship to it.
“So pop music doesn’t have to be terrible. You can take really cool elements and put it in pop music and it’ll sound really good. That’s what I think, hopefully, what I do, what Will.i.am does and what Stargate (production team) do for Rihanna.”
Cruz says he’ll continue to write for other artists even as his solo profile grows.
In fact, he’s recently penned a few tunes for Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber, whom Cruz calls “the biggest thing in pop.”
“They’re just fun party records,” Cruz says of the songs. “He’s young and a fun kid. He appeals to the kids out there having a good time, so the songs I wrote for him were literally, you know: ’Let’s go out and have a good time, party, and have fun.’
“In my opinion, they work for him, so it depends on whether he likes them personally or he and the label feel that’s the direction for him or not, so I’ll just have to wait and see.”
Cruz also takes pride in his Rokstarr “high-street fashion” line, whose eponymous sunglasses (retailing for 165 British pounds online) are a permanent fixture on Cruz (“Even indoors, even at night — just because I feel like it,” he says).
But Cruz points out that his is not a rags-to-riches story, and he doesn’t feel as though he has to fabricate a rugged backstory just to gain credibility.
“My dad had enough money for us all when we were kids,” he says. “I think it’s a case of being yourself. I think it all goes wrong when you try to pretend that you’re someone else. So if I hang out with Ludacris, I don’t start trying to act like I’m gangster.
“You’ve just gotta be yourself. Either they accept you or they don’t.”