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Jamiroquai's frontman Jay Kay is quite possibly a record company's worst nightmare.
He is undeniably talented. Yet unlike other flaky artists who might be too wasted to take an interest in the business side of the music business, Jay Kay can reel off his chart positions from anywhere in the world, his global sales figures and even budgets of his ground-breaking music videos.
And when this interview was scheduled -- and blown out -- five times, he's ready with an explanation.
"I'm sorry about that," a polite Jay Kay says.
"It's been a tough and testing week, we've lost one manager and we're moving ahead. What went wrong? Let's just say if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Yes, Jay Kay is a canny businessman who just happens to be an effortless showman as well.
But at the moment the business is getting him down. As an artist who's embraced the music video, making boundary-pushing, hi-tech clips for the likes of Virtual Insanity (the one with the moving floor) and Canned Heat (where he flew through walls of a house), asking him about his latest video, You Give Me Something, provokes unusual honesty.
"That video is crap. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. My original idea had been tampered with by everyone from the record company to the management," he says.
His original location was Ibiza. Then it was moved to New York, with his flight scheduled for September 11.
"So obviously that didn't happen. We ended up doing it in the Docklands in London in the pissing rain. I wasn't very happy with it."
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